Composition 1961

Jean Fautrier made this painting with oils, laying down marks in ochre, black, and the palest blue. I can imagine how the painting came into being: shifting, emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I sympathize with Fautrier, imagining what it might have been like to create this piece. What might he have been thinking when he made it? The paint is neither too thick nor too thin, but has a certain crustiness, lending the work its emotional and intellectual heft. Look closely at the top line, a stroke of grey-blue, so quiet, so still, so full of feeling. It seems clear to me that Fautrier converses with the work of other painters, and that artists are in an ongoing exchange of ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting is a form of embodied expression which embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meanings, not fixed or definitive readings.