Berliner Raga 4 1983

Luciano Bartolini made this, one of his ‘Berliner Raga’ paintings, with house paint and enamel. The image comes into being with these drips and stains and the single, decisive gesture of the yellow brushstroke. I can imagine Bartolini, in his studio, with all these cans of hardware store paint, tilting the canvas, letting the paint run in these rivulets, and then, like a lightning bolt, this yellow slash. What was he thinking? Maybe about landscape? The architecture of a flower? Or maybe he was just improvising, like a musician riffing on a raga. Look at how the enamel creates this cracked, web-like surface, which gives the painting this feeling of age. I think of other painters like, say, Pat Steir, who have embraced the drip, allowing gravity and chance to play a role in the image-making. Ultimately, artists are magpies, always borrowing and transforming. It is this ongoing exchange that keeps painting alive. Each gesture is a dialogue with the past, an improvisation on what has come before, and an invitation to the future.