Stretcher (covered with a sheet of transparent plastic) 1967

Daniel Dezeuze made this stretcher covered with transparent plastic sometime in his career. What I love is that Dezeuze's stretcher is not just a support; it's the whole damn thing. It’s a framework, but it’s laid bare, like a skeleton. It’s like he's asking, what are the bare bones of painting? What’s the point of it all? I can imagine him handling the wood, feeling its grain, thinking about all the paintings that have been stretched on similar frames. It's really brave to show us the bones of the artwork, a kind of vulnerability you don't often see. It reminds me a little of the way some artists have used collage or assemblage, not to create a picture, but to show you how pictures are made. Artists like Kurt Schwitters, for example. It’s like we’re all in this conversation, across time, about what painting can be. It’s a way of embracing the messiness of the process, the uncertainty, and all the questions that come up along the way.