Honor Pythagoras, Per I--Per VI 1964

Alfred Jensen made this painting, "Honor Pythagoras, Per I--Per VI," with oil on canvas, and it's a real head-scratcher in the best way. The way the painting is so clearly about process is what gets me. I see it as a kind of visual system, or maybe even a game. Look at the surface: the colors are laid down in these deliberate, blocky marks, like someone building with legos, one brick at a time. There’s something so satisfying in the painting’s commitment to this ordered but imperfect method, and it makes me wonder what rules Jensen was following. There's a real tension between the logic of the image and its handmade quality. The colours, yellow, blue, red and black create this hypnotic affect as your eyes dart from shape to shape. It is like the artist is trying to solve a problem with paint. You might get a kick out of Hilma af Klint if you're into the kind of pattern-based painting Jensen is doing here. Both artists seem to speak a secret language through their work, inviting us to interpret their visual puzzles.