City Movement 1940

John Marin made this watercolor, City Movement, sometime in the 30's. He’s so good at suggesting that everything is a bit unstable! The city is happening. The colors are like emotions, not descriptions. Look at how he’s drawn the buildings, all tilted and kind of vibrating. It’s like he’s captured the energy of the city, not just its appearance. He's got these blues pulling down on the composition like gravity and the grays just making a mess. The red is angry. And the whole thing is grounded by the artist's signature in the lower right. I’m reminded of Arthur Dove. Marin is great at letting the paint do its thing. It's that tension between control and accident that makes the work sing. He’s not trying to hide the process, and that openness is what gives the painting its immediacy. It’s like he's saying, "Here it is, folks, the city, in all its messy, glorious motion."