Jan Müller exhibition at Hansa Gallery--New York City 1958

Robert Frank captured this image of Jan Müller’s exhibition at Hansa Gallery in New York City, maybe sometime in the 50s. Those paintings are all ghostly figures, rendered in stark black and white. I can imagine Müller, throwing those shapes down, a frenzy of intuitive mark-making, scraping and layering, pushing at the canvas until these forms emerge. I sympathize with him here; that feeling when the work is so alive it takes on a life of its own. And I wonder, did he feel like he was channeling something, working like a medium between worlds? It makes me think of Philip Guston’s later paintings, or maybe even some of the weirder history paintings, Goya, or something. Artists are constantly riffing off each other across time, you know? It’s an ongoing conversation. Ultimately, painting is about embracing ambiguity and uncertainty. There’s no single meaning, it’s an invitation to imagine, to feel, to connect.