Fortune Teller 1954

Benton Spruance made this lithograph called Fortune Teller, but when, where, how…is the mystery that this artwork invites us to consider. The gold monochrome colour scheme gives the whole scene a kind of ancient-future feel, like a memory of a dream, or a premonition of one to come. I see a person with their head covered, perhaps telling fortunes with tarot cards. I imagine Spruance, bent over a lithographic stone, working and reworking the image to get the tonality and the strange composition just right. What would it be like to be him? What did he see? I like the way the figure’s face is left so blank, like a mask. It makes me think of other artists, like Marsden Hartley, who were interested in symbolism and the occult. Artists, in general, are constantly looking for new ways of seeing and representing the world around them. I see in this artwork a similar curiosity about the unknown, and an invitation to consider the possibilities of what might be.