Bellerophon Taming Pegasus c. 1964

Jacques Lipchitz made this drawing of Bellerophon Taming Pegasus on a sheet of paper, and it feels like he was really working something out. The lines are searching, feeling their way around the forms. You can see how the white chalk jumps off the brown paper, almost like the figures are emerging from a cloud. Lipchitz isn't trying to hide the process, you can see all the starts and stops, the places where he changed his mind. Look at the way the lines vary in thickness, sometimes bold and assertive, other times light and tentative. There's a real sense of energy and movement in the way he's captured the struggle between Bellerophon and Pegasus. This reminds me of Picasso, another artist who was constantly experimenting with form and space. But Lipchitz brings his own unique sensibility to the subject, a kind of rough-hewn expressiveness. For Lipchitz, art wasn't about perfection, it was about the messy, unpredictable process of creation.