Graphic Sheet 2-II 1965

Karel Malich made this Graphic Sheet in 1967, using what looks like pencil or ink on paper. It’s mostly vertical lines, very close together, except for a kind of hazy block on the right side, and then a single horizontal line cutting across the whole picture. I can imagine Malich making this, so meditative and repetitive. Like Agnes Martin, maybe he’s trying to find a kind of quietness through this repetition, like a mantra. But it's also a system, those ruled lines create a screen, a field, a kind of optical thing that the viewer can get lost in. That single horizontal line—it's placed perfectly. It has to be perfect; it is not quite in the middle. You know, it makes me think about Sol LeWitt and the conceptual artists, who used simple lines to create complex systems. It’s like Malich is talking to them, saying, "Hey, I can do that too, but with a little bit more feeling, a little bit more humanity." And that’s what art is, right? A conversation across time, artists inspiring each other, pushing each other to see the world in new ways.