Chest of Drawers c. 1938

Francis Borelli made this chest of drawers sometime in the twentieth century. It’s a drawing of an object, carefully rendered in ink and watercolor. I love the symmetry and the rhythm of the drawer fronts. The wood is honey-colored, set against the red framework, but the surface of the paper is quite flat, and the effect is actually graphic. I wonder if Borelli was looking at early American folk art when he made this? There is a pleasing, regular geometry at play here. Check out the circles on the bottom drawer. They provide an almost architectural foundation. You can see echoes of this in the work of artists like Agnes Martin, or maybe even some of the more architectural moments in Philip Guston's paintings. Artists are always in conversation, right? We riff off each other across time. It's a beautiful thing.