Untitled #3 c. 1980s

This is an untitled drawing, made by Joel Fisher, sometime after 1947, and it looks like it's on handmade paper. The first thing that strikes me is the subtlety of the whole thing. It's like a whisper of an idea. There's this pale, fibrous paper with torn edges, and then these very faint, almost hesitant lines drawn on top. I love how the lines are so tentative, as if Fisher is feeling his way through the form, and how you can see the ghost of erasures, the pentimenti, where he's changed his mind. It's like a diagram of a thought process, which maybe it is. The lines themselves are like a roadmap of the artist's hand moving across the surface, each one a record of a decision made and unmade. This reminds me a little of Cy Twombly, in that it's all about the gesture, the act of drawing itself, rather than any kind of fixed representation. You're left with this feeling of openness, of possibility, rather than a clear-cut statement.