Green Tilted Ellipse - Gray Frame 1989

Robert Mangold made this painting, "Green Tilted Ellipse - Gray Frame", with acrylic and graphite on canvas. Imagine Mangold, in his studio, working on this diptych of shaped canvases. A green rectangle, hosting a tilted ellipse, meets a kind of angular, architectural, grey form. What I love about Mangold is his simplicity; the way he asks painting to be both a shaped object *and* a representational picture—sort of. He has a light touch, using thin washes of color that give it a feeling of being handmade. The graphite line defining the ellipse has a similar quality, a bit shaky and imperfect. You can see the trace of his hand. I find myself trying to imagine the conversations Mangold might have had with other artists, like Ellsworth Kelly, who also explored shape and color in innovative ways. It's like they're all in this ongoing dialogue, pushing the boundaries of what painting can be. Each brushstroke feels like a small experiment, a question posed to the canvas.