Hitchcock Chair Back 1936

Lawrence Flynn made this drawing of a Hitchcock Chair Back, we don’t know exactly when, using what looks like graphite and colored pencil on paper. The controlled palette of ochre, gold and black is really striking, and somehow lends the design an iconic feel. What I love about this image is its tight ornamentation, which looks almost like something printed, or even like a digital vector graphic, but when you look closer you notice the subtle, slight wobbles that reveal the work of the hand. The drawing’s texture isn’t so much about the surface quality, or the ‘thingness’ of paint, but more about the details: a highlight there, a shadow here. The whole design feels like a conversation between flatness and depth, like the artist is making something that is both of the real world and pictorially self-contained. It reminds me a little of some of Stuart Davis’s flattened, graphic compositions of the 1920s and 30s. The longer you look, the more you realize this is not so much about the thing itself, but about the magic of making a picture.