Untitled 1967

Seymour Lipton made this drawing on paper in 1967, using charcoal or something similarly dark and smudgy. The marks are immediate. It’s like he’s wrestling with space. You know, it’s interesting to imagine him making it. Squinting, maybe pacing. Trying to figure out the relationship between those shapes. Is it a sculpture? Is it a machine? Or is it just a feeling, trying to find its form? I like how the heavy blacks push forward, while the lighter grays recede. There is a kind of energy in the lines. It feels like a release, an effort to capture something fleeting. It’s not about precision, it's about intuition, responding to the material, the charcoal, the paper. And you sense Lipton, in that moment, talking to other artists too. Each mark he makes is like a question or an answer in a long conversation that spans centuries. Each artist adds their own brushstroke, smudge, or line. It creates a kind of call and response between the past and the present. It's a language of feeling and form.