Flowers in Goblet #2 1923

Marsden Hartley's Flowers in Goblet #2 is a tumble of marks made with lithographic crayon or something similar, a greasy material dragged across a stone to make this print. It's all about the hand, the wrist, the pressure, and the release, a real recording of energy. Look at how the marks gather to form the shadows under the base of the goblet. They almost vibrate with a life of their own, distinct from the form they're meant to describe. It makes you think about what abstraction is. Is it about simplifying? Or amplifying some inherent energy? Hartley did lots of still lives like this, but he also painted some very heartfelt symbolic portraits after the death of his young lover. Both are part of the same impulse, a need to make a monument to feeling. You might see a similar sensibility in the work of someone like Elizabeth Murray, a commitment to emotional heft through form.