Le tumulte à la mâchoire crispée 1946

Marcel Barbeau made *Le tumulte à la mâchoire crispée* using a pretty broad color palette and bold mark making. Artmaking is a process of discovery, right? And in this piece, you can see Barbeau laying down each stroke, each color, building it up, and finding the image as he goes. I love the materiality of the work; you can see the texture, the color, the surface. The paint looks thick in places, almost sculptural. Can you see those reds at the bottom? Look at how they bleed into the whites and grays. It's like a dance of color and texture that creates a feeling of, well, a *tumulte*. I think of Joan Mitchell, someone else who knew how to make a painting breathe and seethe at the same time. Art is an ongoing conversation, a back-and-forth across time and space. It's not about fixed meanings, but about embracing ambiguity and seeing where it takes you.