Basket, Table, Door, Window, Mirror, Rug #39 [recto] 1974

Richard Artschwager made this drawing, titled "Basket, Table, Door, Window, Mirror, Rug #39," with graphite on paper. It's interesting how he uses simple lines to create a kind of inventory of domestic objects. The thing that grabs me here is the off-kilter perspective. Everything's a little skewed, a little wobbly, like a memory of a room rather than a faithful depiction. Look at the door on the right – it’s not quite square, and its relationship to the wall behind is all wonky. This play with perspective reminds me a bit of Giorgio de Chirico's surreal cityscapes, where space feels dreamlike and unsettling. What Artschwager does so well is to take these ordinary objects and make them strange, forcing us to look at them in a new way. The title itself is like a list, a collection of nouns that only hint at a bigger picture. I'm left wondering, what's the relationship between these things? What kind of space are they inhabiting? It’s this ambiguity that makes the drawing so compelling.