Untitled (34-8) 1934

Balcomb Greene made this collage, with its khaki ground, from different paper scraps and a muted palette. It looks like a game of peek-a-boo! I can imagine Balcomb Greene shuffling these forms around on his desk like cards, each one a little risk, thinking, ‘how will this bit of pink conversation change things?’ What a luxury, to spend one's life pushing things around until they resonate! I feel a connection with his searching, a kind of playful seriousness as if the arrangement of forms might reveal some kind of hidden order in the world. I think of Kurt Schwitters and his collages, or even Matisse toward the end of his life, when he was bedridden and made those incredible paper cutouts. There is something so tender about the scale, the casualness, and the vulnerability of this piece – the kind of freedom that comes when you just let yourself play.