Gronk! 1964

Norman Bluhm made this painting, Gronk!, using oil on canvas, and what strikes me is how alive the painting is. The colours, although a little muted, vibrate against the white ground, which is not really white at all but broken up with tiny strokes and flicks of colour. I like the way Bluhm lets the paint run. Look at the lower right, where the paint splatters and drips like dark tears. It’s really physical and gestural, like he’s wrestling with something. The big black strokes almost look like they’re framing or containing something, but what? His work reminds me of Joan Mitchell, another abstract expressionist who wasn’t afraid to get messy and emotional. Art is, after all, an ongoing conversation, a place of ambiguity where fixed meanings dissolve.