Julius Caesar Quadrangle of the Moon 1972

Nancy Graves made this map of the moon’s Julius Caesar Quadrangle, a constellation of tiny colored dots, probably with ink or watercolor. I can just imagine her, patiently building up this lunar surface, one dot at a time. It reminds me of the pointillist paintings of Seurat, except instead of capturing light and atmosphere, she's mapping the cosmos. There's an obsessive quality to it, almost scientific, yet it’s so delicate. The pinks, blues, and greens create a dreamy, otherworldly feel. Look at those clusters of dots. Maybe she was thinking about how the smallest mark can contribute to a larger pattern, just like we do as artists. Graves was also a sculptor, and she brings a sculptor’s eye to painting. She might have been asking what it means to chart something so distant using earthly materials? That tension—between the knowable and the unknowable—feels so contemporary, and is something other artists such as Agnes Martin have also dealt with in their practice. It’s as if she is saying: art is a way of trying to grasp the ungraspable.