Untitled 1962

Marcelle Cahn made this untitled piece, and you can see how she’s feeling out the space with simple shapes and a muted palette. It’s all about the process, right? Like she’s arranging thoughts on a page. The material feels like a dream; look at the velvety texture and subtle color shifts, almost like dust motes dancing in a beam of light. Notice the balance she strikes between opacity and transparency; how the shapes seem to float, anchored only by their shadows. Then there’s that one little gold circle, right there in the center. It’s so small, but it pulls the whole piece together. Like a tiny sun in a strange little universe. Cahn was part of a vibrant artistic community, and her experiments with abstraction remind me of the work of Sophie Taeuber-Arp. I think this piece celebrates uncertainty and lets us find our own meaning in it.