Song of the Nightingale 1964

Hans Hofmann made this untitled oil painting, now in a private collection, with a kind of clanging color harmony. It's a push-pull of warm and cool, like he's staging a party and everyone's invited. Look closely, and you can see how the edges of those rectangles aren't perfect, they're kind of chewed up, alive. That green square, sitting right in the middle, is so present, so assertive. It's like a big, juicy apple in the middle of a messy table. The surface is where the action is, though. Hofmann isn’t afraid to let the paint do its thing. It’s drippy, it’s chunky, it’s a whole conversation about the joy and the struggle of getting paint to behave. It’s like Hofmann’s saying, "Hey, art’s not about perfection, it’s about the dance." He reminds me a bit of Joan Mitchell; both artists have that same gutsy, let-it-all-hang-out vibe. You get the feeling that he's inviting you to feel your way through it. No right or wrong, just feeling.