Cartouche from Salem Gate c. 1939

Alfred H. Smith made this watercolor and graphite "Cartouche from Salem Gate." The color palette is quite limited, mostly shades of grey and beige, and the shapes are so simple, but something about the combination creates a kind of heraldic power. There's a thinness to the pigment, a transparency, that's really interesting. Look at how the brown area bleeds into the cream background. The marks are so subtle, it's hard to tell exactly what kind of tools Smith used. The sword and horn are crossed, overlaid with a ribbon. I wonder what the symbolism of these three items mean. The whole thing is an emblem, a sign or a logo. As a painter, I like to embrace the accidents, the drips, the messiness, and Smith does that here too. It feels alive somehow. It’s the kind of controlled looseness you see in the work of someone like Jasper Johns. The art world is a conversation across generations.