Textile c. 1937

This piece called 'Textile' was made by Frank Maurer, and it looks like he used colored pencils, or maybe even crayons, to conjure up this homespun vision. It's like he's thinking through the act of making through the colors and marks. The texture is everything here. Look at how each tiny stroke builds up to create a fabric-like surface. The colors, a mix of red and blue, aren't blended but layered, giving the whole thing a vibrating kind of energy. The edges of the colored square are kind of fuzzy, and bleed into the off-white of the page. You can almost feel the give of the fabric, the slight unevenness of a handmade thing. It reminds me a little of Agnes Martin's grids, but with a folksier, more intimate touch. Like art is this ongoing conversation, a back-and-forth between artists across time and space. It doesn't offer any answers, but is more of a question.