Echiquier 1971

Aurelie Nemours made this piece, Echiquier, with oil paint on canvas. These are conventional materials, of course, but observe how the artist applies the paint. You can see the texture of her brushstrokes, and the way she layers the colors to achieve subtle tonal variations. This kind of mark-making is hardly accidental. Rather, the work gains a real presence because of the labor that is so evident in its making. The repeated application of paint gives the work a handmade quality, in contrast to the more industrial or mechanical aesthetics that were influential at the time Nemours was active. And that gets to the heart of the matter: Nemours, and other artists who stayed committed to this kind of directness, remind us that abstraction is always grounded in material and process. It's not just an idea, but an act of making.