Panel c. 20th century

This "Panel" was made by an artist named Pygmy, and it lives here at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It’s got a very soft colour palette of browns and beiges, a bit like parchment, and it’s covered in these delicate line markings. I imagine the artist drawing, gently coaxing these patterns onto the surface. It’s almost like they’re mapping out a secret world, or even a hidden language that only they understand. I wonder what they were thinking as they made it? The lines are so precise, and they crisscross like roads and buildings seen from above. There’s such care in the way the lines meet and diverge. I keep thinking of Agnes Martin – her quiet intensity, but this feels more intimate and connected to something…older. Artists, we’re all in a conversation, you know? Reaching back, reaching forward, and finding new ways to say old things. Painting, it’s a form of embodied expression. It can be vague, ambiguous, but always open for interpretation.