Compostion XV 1962

Matta made this print titled Composition XV, and it’s a total playground of marks. The looping lines mixed with flat planes make me think about the push and pull in artmaking. You start with an idea, but then the materials and the process take over, right? I love the way the texture almost dissolves into the dark background. Then you get these bursts of flat, white shapes, like someone’s trying to build a spaceship from memory. Check out the orbs; they have this olive green dot smack in the middle. It’s such a simple move, but it pulls your eye around the whole piece. It's this weird combo of mechanical and organic, like something from a dream about technology. Matta reminds me a bit of Gorky, with that same sense of invented forms and surreal landscapes. But where Gorky's all soft edges, Matta's got this hard, angular thing going on. Anyway, it’s a good reminder that art’s always a conversation, everyone riffing on each other, trying to figure stuff out.