Contact 1957

Bernard Childs made this print, Contact, sometime in the 20th century, and it's a wild dance of lines. It's all about process, you can feel the artist working, almost like he's wrestling with the image. The texture is amazing, a real map of where the artist has been. Look at the way the ink sits on the paper, sometimes thick and rich, sometimes barely there. It's physical, you can almost feel the pressure of the tool. And then there's this one line, shooting up from the bottom, anchoring everything, but also kind of defiant. It reminds me of de Kooning’s work - that same energy, that same feeling of being on the edge of something. It’s like Childs is saying, "Here's what I've got, make sense of it if you can." Art isn't about answers, it's about the questions.