On the Point of a Lance, Amongst Us, This Horse's Skull! 1957

Benton Spruance made this lithograph, On the Point of a Lance, Amongst Us, This Horse's Skull!, which is a complicated title for a complicated picture! I'm always struck by how artists choose to lay down marks; here, the granular texture feels almost like a memory surfacing. The surface isn't smooth. It's got a real bite, a tangible roughness achieved with lithography, where the image is drawn on stone and then printed. See how the light catches on the white shroud, and then the horse's skull? It’s all about these contrasts, light and dark. There’s a figure in the center, veiled, and the tension between revealing and concealing really gets me. Then there’s that naked figure on the right. The way Spruance renders the back - it reminds me of late Guston, and his focus on a kind of vulnerable, searching humanity. Art is always an ongoing conversation, isn't it? Spruance leaves us with questions, not answers, and that's what makes it so compelling.