Transformation of the Lineaments 1953

Leon Golub made this print, Transformation of the Lineaments, with lithographic ink, and what I see in its making is a real wrestling match with the stone. There’s a kind of violence to the surface, a dense layering of marks, that feels almost sculptural. Look how the ink has been dragged and scraped, creating this incredibly tactile, almost brutal texture. It’s like Golub is digging into the surface, unearthing something raw and visceral. The limited palette of blacks and grays only intensifies this feeling, stripping away any distraction to focus on the sheer physicality of the mark-making. My eye keeps returning to that central, horizontal band, where the lines seem to converge and then explode outwards. It’s as if the entire image is in a state of perpetual flux, never quite resolving itself into a coherent form. You could compare Golub’s approach to someone like Cy Twombly, who also embraced the gestural and the imperfect, but there’s an undeniable sense of urgency and confrontation here. It doesn’t settle.