Headdress c. 1937

Eva Noe made this drawing, called ‘Headdress’, presumably with graphite and colored pencil. What I love about it, is that the face wearing the titular headdress is left blank. The paper has aged to a warm cream color, but the color palette is still very muted. There is a gentle handling of tone, and a sense of softness to the folds and gathers of the fabric. This creates a visual tension with the spare, almost clinical, line of the absent face. Look at the way the pencil is used to pick out the texture of the fabric with tiny marks, these small notations read like a map or a code. I’m put in mind of Agnes Martin, who also worked with grids and delicate marks, albeit with abstraction, to create visual fields of calm. There's a lightness of touch here, and an embrace of something ephemeral. Ultimately, it's that emptiness at its center that makes this drawing so compelling.