Seated Nude, New York City c. 1935

John Marin made this watercolour drawing, Seated Nude, New York City, at an undetermined date. It’s a watercolour, so, of course, it's very liquid, but Marin's got such an assuredness of line. Look how he's placed the figure in the room; she seems to be both inside and outside, the cityscape hovering behind. The materiality here is very immediate. You can sense the wetness of the watercolor and how it pools on the page. He's using the pinks and browns to delineate the nude form and the ochres and blacks to create the city. Then, there's that strange, scribbled form over the skyline! It's a very intimate, almost vulnerable work. The thin, transparent washes allow the paper to breathe, while the gestural lines give it a lively, energetic feel. That one small, almost scribbled flower on the table to the right really grounds the whole thing! Marin's work, particularly his cityscapes, reminds me of Lyonel Feininger's fractured, crystalline compositions; both artists found a way to capture the dynamic energy of modern life. I love the way this piece embraces uncertainty, how it revels in the suggestive power of the incomplete.