Untitled 1961

This untitled piece by John Altoon, made with ink on paper, feels like a page torn from a sketchbook, immediate and raw. It's all about the process, the artist's hand moving across the surface, creating these weird, wonderful forms. The ink is applied with varying pressure, creating lines that are sometimes delicate and thin, and other times thick and bold. There's a real sense of texture here, even though it's just ink on paper. Look at the way Altoon uses hatching and cross-hatching to create depth and shadow, especially in the strange, almost figurative shapes. There's one form over on the left that looks like some kind of stick figure, or maybe a really wonky robot, but it's the area to the right of that, a darker patch of tangled lines, that really grabs my attention. It's like a knot of energy, a burst of pure feeling. Altoon's work reminds me a bit of Cy Twombly, that same sense of freedom and improvisation. And like Twombly, Altoon invites us to see the world in a new way, to embrace ambiguity, and to find beauty in the unexpected.