Orange Oval 1972

Adolph Gottlieb made this painting, Orange Oval, with oil paint, and a pretty limited palette of colours. What I see here is a kind of dance between intention and accident, control and release. There's that warm mustard ground, and then the floating shapes, some soft and fuzzy and some sharp and bold. Look how the colours interact: the solid orange oval seems to hover over the more chaotic marks below, while the black dots echo the dark strokes in the lower part of the painting. And there's all this texture - you can almost feel the bristles of the brush, especially around the edges of the shapes. Notice the little drips and splatters, like the painting is still in the process of becoming. Thinking about who Gottlieb's contemporaries were – people like Rothko and Newman – I see a similar search for something primal, something deeply felt. But Gottlieb's got this playful edge, a lightness that makes you think about the endless possibilities of painting.