Lights and Plane Parts c. 1940s

Ralston Crawford made this drawing called "Lights and Plane Parts" with ink on paper. It's all about the push and pull of these architectural shapes, and the different ways of making marks. Look at the hatched area in the upper left, right next to the smooth white curve. It's like Crawford is building up tone with all these tiny little lines. There's a real density there, and it gives that shape a different kind of weight, compared to the circles just below. That interplay between line and shape, texture and flatness, is so compelling. You can almost feel Crawford working through it, figuring out how to make this world of forms come alive on the page. It's a language all its own, like the architectural drawings of Piranesi. Art isn't just about what you see, but about how you see it, and what you decide to do with it.