Art History Number One 1990

Robert Keyser made this intaglio, Art History Number One, and it really shows a printmaker's mind at work. The way the shapes are built, almost like collage, suggests someone thinking about layering and construction. The colors are muted, almost ghostly, and the lines have that gorgeous, slightly unpredictable quality you get with etching. There's this great blob of red in the bottom left. It is obviously printed, but it looks like it could almost be made of guts. Look at how it's formed from these tiny marks, like he's building up the image bit by bit. You get a sense of someone really engaged with the materiality of printmaking. It reminds me a little of Guston, actually, that same willingness to embrace the clunky and awkward. Like Guston, Keyser understands that art isn't about perfection, it’s about process, about the messy, beautiful struggle to make something new.