Ancestor (Ancêtre) 1965

Pierre Alechinsky’s ‘Ancestor’ is a lithograph made with ochre, red, and blue inks, and the colours hum together. I can imagine him bent over the litho stone, working in a flurry of marks, trying to conjure something from deep in his mind. It makes me think of a psychedelic tribal mask, maybe seen through the eyes of someone who's been reading too much Jung. What I love about Alechinsky's work is how he lets the marks themselves do the talking. The looping lines of red and blue create eyes, a nose, a mouth. It’s like he's saying, “Here's a face, but it's also just a bunch of scribbles.” That one looping gesture that makes up the left eye, for example, it feels both chaotic and incredibly precise, as if he was chasing a feeling more than a form. It all makes me think about this ongoing conversation that artists have with each other, across time and place, and how Alechinsky's just adding his own weird, wonderful voice to the mix.