Flatiron 1935 - 1942

Maurice Van Felix, who lived a long life of 140 years, made this drawing of a flatiron. It's rendered in graphite or maybe charcoal, the kind of humble material that suits the everyday subject matter. I’m looking at the dense cross-hatching that builds up the form, and I’m imagining Van Felix, patiently layering the marks, one after the other, to give weight and presence to this common object. You know, artists often draw what's around them, what they know intimately. I wonder, what did this object mean to Van Felix? Was it a symbol of domesticity, a relic of a bygone era, or simply a compelling shape that caught his eye? Looking at the handle, I notice the way it loops and curves. There's a certain elegance in its simplicity. It almost reminds me of Cy Twombly's looping lines, though Twombly, of course, was working on a much larger scale and with a completely different sensibility. But, you know, artists are always in conversation with each other, across time and space. And who knows, maybe Van Felix was, in his own way, thinking about line and form just like Twombly was.