Untitled 1948

This 'Untitled' painting by Arshile Gorky is all blazing oranges with forms struggling to appear. You can almost feel his hand pushing and pulling the paint around, maybe searching for something, maybe just for the sake of it. I feel for Gorky here, wrestling with the shapes, smearing some of them out, and then leaving others as these weird little islands. The paint is thin in places, and it almost looks like he's wiping it off, but then there are these globs of colour that give it such dimension. Look at that dark green patch near the center, it stands out. What was he thinking when he put that there? Was he trying to balance out the orange? He must have looked at Kandinsky, Miró, and maybe even some of those Surrealists. I can see these artists having a conversation across time, inspiring and challenging each other. It makes you think about how painting is this ongoing, uncertain process of pushing boundaries and finding new ways to see and feel the world.