Icarus 2003

Alfred Freddy Krupa made this drawing of Icarus with ink on paper. Look at those sweeping black lines. They capture the myth of flight and failure in such a direct way. I can imagine Krupa with his brush, quickly moving, trying to keep up with his thoughts. There's a real urgency in the strokes, a sense of Icarus's reckless abandon as he flies too close to the sun. The ink is so fluid, so immediate. It’s not overworked, just raw and expressive. Those lines shooting out from the sun, some thick, some thin, they remind me of other artists like Brice Marden or even Cy Twombly, who used lines to convey a kind of frenetic energy. It feels like part of a long conversation artists have been having for years about trying to capture a feeling, a moment, with the simplest of means. And that little splash of brown in the corner? A reminder that even in the most tragic stories, there's still room for accident, for chance, in art and in life.