Jar c. 1937

Charles Caseau made this watercolor of a jar sometime in the 20th century. You can really see his hand in it, in how he's layered these muted browns and blues, one on top of the other. For me, that's what art's about: a record of a way of seeing. The way the color pools at the bottom, it's like Caseau was really thinking about gravity, about the weight of the jar. But then, there's this delicacy to the drawing, like he's breathing life into something solid and still. The squiggles at the top of the jar are almost cartoonish, a playful little dance around the serious business of representation. It reminds me a little of Giorgio Morandi's bottles, but with a folksier touch. It's this blend of precision and looseness that gets me, the feeling that art doesn't always have to be one thing or the other.