Eagle c. 1940

This is Milton Grubstein’s drawing of an eagle. It’s rendered with graphite on paper. You know, there’s something both free and controlled about this piece. I bet Grubstein had to keep his hand steady as he painstakingly built up layers of marks to give the eagle its form and weight. The graphite is so dense in places, and the precision in the feathers... I wonder if Grubstein was thinking about the bald eagle as a symbol, and if so, what that meant for him. What does it mean to capture that kind of symbolism? It reminds me of how Guston would draw everyday objects, investing them with a quiet intensity. It’s like Grubstein is saying, "Here's an eagle, but it's also something more." For me, it becomes a question about how we see, what we choose to see, and how those choices reflect back on us.