Untitled 1947

Adolph Gottlieb made this untitled painting with oil and maybe some other media, but the surface has a kind of porous quality so I’m not totally sure. The thing that gets me about this painting is the surface, and the way it looks like it might have been made bit by bit. Like, he made a mark, and then he decided to put a box around it, and then another mark. Like each little cell is an idea—a trial, an error—and the whole painting is a record of that thinking. I'm also seeing a kind of symbolic language. I see these shapes, these eyes, these zigzag lines, and they kind of remind me of other painters. Ultimately, it's a bit mysterious and open-ended. It’s not really about answers. It's more about an ongoing conversation and a way of thinking and working that makes room for different ways of seeing and feeling.