Chair 1935 - 1942

John Garay made this drawing of a chair with some kind of marker, or maybe colored pencil – you can see all the strokes. It has this lovely handmade quality, like you could make it yourself! The drawing is so clean, precise, and controlled, a real feat of observation. It’s all in the line work – look how he varies the pressure to give a sense of depth and shadow. The curves and flourishes on the legs are so tenderly rendered, each one a tiny hill or valley, that your eye can just bounce around forever. And there’s this great tension between the ornate, almost baroque details of the chair and the flatness of the rendering, which brings this humble object firmly into the realm of image making. Garay reminds me of some of the meticulous modernists like Agnes Martin or Sol Lewitt, who also found endless possibilities in simple forms. But, what does it mean, maybe it is just a chair.