Study for "Altar" 1963

Seymour Lipton made this study for Altar with graphite on paper. It’s a landscape of sharp edges and soft curves, an environment that's hard and tender all at once. I'm really feeling for Lipton, trying to work out a sculpture in two dimensions! I imagine him thinking about how to translate volume into line, how to suggest depth with only a few strokes. See that dark, smudged area? It’s like he’s pushing the graphite into the paper, trying to excavate the form from the blankness. The composition has such a powerful simplicity. It reminds me of other artists who were also preoccupied with stripping things down to their essential forms. It’s like Lipton is having a conversation with them, across time and space. This study feels like a meditation, a way of thinking through making. And, to me, that’s what art is all about—a process of ongoing discovery.