Untitled 1962

This untitled work, by Richards Ruben, is a drawing, but it flirts with painting. It’s all about process. The stains, the pencil marks, they’re not hiding anything. There’s a real physicality to the piece. The tooth of the paper grabs the graphite, creating this rough texture that your eye just wants to run across. Look at the dark, solid mass in the center. It's a wall of grey pencil strokes, all packed together real tight. But then, next to it, you've got these whispy, lyrical lines that seem to dance around the edges of the form. It’s a great contrast. Ruben reminds me of Guston, in a way, in his use of drawing as a tool for thinking. I get the feeling that this piece wasn’t planned out ahead of time. It’s a conversation, a back-and-forth between the artist and the material. And it's open-ended, which means you get to join the conversation too.