Untitled 1961

Franz Kline made this painting, Untitled, with big, confident strokes of black paint on a white ground. I imagine him standing close to the canvas, maybe on the floor, really feeling the movement as he applied each mark. You know, when I look at this, I think about how hard it is to be so direct, so sure of every gesture. What was Kline thinking when he made those bold lines? Was he wrestling with something, or was he just totally in the zone, letting the paint do its thing? There’s such energy in those strokes. It reminds me of the work of other painters, like Robert Motherwell, who were also exploring abstraction with a kind of raw intensity. We’re all in conversation with each other, you know, across time and space. Painting is about exchange, about seeing what someone else did and thinking, "Yeah, I want to try that," or "No way, I’m going in a different direction." It’s all connected. It’s all just one big, messy, beautiful conversation.