Abstract Speed: The Car has Passed 1913

Giacomo Balla made this painting called, ‘Abstract Speed: The Car has Passed’ with oil on canvas. It’s a pretty cool way of thinking about process, about how something is painted over time, how a car moves and shifts our view of a landscape. I love the blues, greens, and whites he’s used. There’s a real sense of the material here, you can see how the paint has been built up in layers, mixed and blended in certain areas, or left thin and translucent elsewhere. The surface isn’t smooth and flat, there's a real physicality. Look at the way he’s painted the lines of colour in the bottom right, the subtle gradations, the way the colours change. It reminds me of Duchamp's ‘Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2’, another exploration of motion and time on canvas. Art’s like a never-ending conversation. It’s always questioning, always looking for new ways to make us see the world.