Untitled c. 1948

Franz Kline made this untitled drawing on paper with ink. Just imagine Kline with his brush, slashing and dripping, making bold gestures in black against the white ground. It’s like the memory of a room or a still life, all edges and angles. Kline is not carefully filling in lines to create a realistic image but instead reducing the world to a series of marks and traces. Look at how he frames the scene. The lines wobble, the ink pools, and the shapes emerge from the chaos. Maybe he’s after something raw and unfiltered, like a dream or a fleeting feeling. You know, all artists are like eavesdroppers, listening in on conversations that began long before them and that will continue long after. Kline was a painter and he invites us to see things, not as they are, but as they might be. It is an invitation to embrace the open-endedness of art, and life.