Waschlapen 1965

Konrad Lueg made this painting called Waschlapen. It’s all these rows of colorful, somewhat floral, somewhat balloon-shaped forms. I love the way the surface isn’t trying to trick you. There's no blending, no illusion, it’s just laid bare as a process. You see the build up of the marks, this yellow halo around the shapes. It’s like a painting that wants to be honest about what it is and how it came to be. There's this one form, right in the middle, kind of an orangey-red. It feels like the anchor of the whole piece. I keep coming back to it. It's not perfect, it's a little smudged, but it's that imperfection that gives it life. This emphasis on process is something I see echoed in the work of someone like Christopher Wool. Both artists embrace a kind of rawness, a willingness to let the painting be what it is, not what it should be. And that's a beautiful thing.