Shallow Dish c. 1936

John Tarantino made this drawing of a shallow dish in, well, we don't really know when, with what looks like graphite on paper. It's all about the light, isn't it? Look at how Tarantino uses different grades of graphite to suggest the contours and the reflections on the glass. The dish seems to glow from within, almost like a photographic negative. And then, that little detail of the proposed decoration below – a kind of infinity symbol, trapped within a rectangle. You know, it reminds me a bit of Giorgio Morandi's still lifes, where he endlessly rearranged the same bottles and jars, searching for the perfect composition. It’s this kind of repetition, this slow and deliberate process, that allows for a deeper understanding of form and light. It’s like they are trying to grasp something that is always just out of reach. Art is about embracing that ambiguity.