Canal, Venice (Venice from the Giudecca) 1952

William Congdon made this painting, Canal, Venice, with what looks like oil on canvas. It’s like he's wrestling with the canvas. The colour palette is somber, and the application looks really physical. The surface of this painting is a battleground of marks, the paint is thickly applied, but also scraped and rubbed away. I particularly like the way Congdon has rendered the buildings on the left, with frenetic lines over dry brush work. It's as if the architecture is crumbling, like it's being eaten away by the atmosphere. It reminds me of the drawings of Cy Twombly, but with a darker, more brooding sensibility. I guess what I’m getting at is that art is always talking to art. It's a continuum, a conversation that never really ends, and ambiguity is a big part of that conversation.