Athênê (Athena) 1932

Georges Braque made "Athênê" – that's Athena in French – sometime in the 20th century, and it's a lithograph in muted grays and browns. I see a rocking horse that's also a kind of chariot or maybe it's a merging of classical motifs. You know, I love imagining the artist in the studio, wrestling with shapes and forms. Braque was probably thinking about how to make something new out of something old. How to re-combine different parts of ancient times to build something that makes sense now. The texture looks smooth, almost like velvet, which gives the whole image a soft, dreamlike quality. Look at that dark line looping around the horse – it's so confident and playful, like a doodle that suddenly found its purpose. It reminds me a bit of Picasso. Artists are always talking to each other across time, borrowing and riffing off of each other's ideas, and that's what I love about painting: it's this ongoing conversation where nothing is ever really finished, and there's always room for something new to emerge.