Number 11 1964

Here's John McLaughlin, sometime in the 20th century, making a painting with stark black and white rectangles. I want to see the painting being made, watch the artist work! There’s a satisfying flatness in this painting that has a very particular feel; maybe the paint's been pulled thinly across the surface, creating a kind of screen. Imagine the painter, maybe he’s thinking about Kazimir Malevich and other painters of pure form. Or maybe he’s just thinking about nothing but the specific interaction of the black and white. I'm sure he's considered the scale, the proportions of black to white, testing and adjusting it. Looking at the painting, I think about Agnes Martin or Barnett Newman. Each are artists who found new ways of experiencing space and form, of emptying out the image to let something else come through. These artists are like philosophers, constantly teaching us to look and see in new ways, to consider art not as something to be looked at, but something to be experienced.