Untitled (Kopf Mit Hut) 1963

Konrad Lueg made this striking painting of a head with a hat without a date. The heavy black and white shapes are so simplified; you can just feel the painting being made. I’m drawn to the slick black ground, punctuated by raw canvas showing at the edges. The white hat sits atop the head shape, and you can see the drips of white paint running into the black, a record of the artist’s hand at work. The oval void in the center of the head is unnerving, a nothingness, like the figure is not there at all, just a fashionable cipher. It reminds me a little of Alex Katz, in the hard graphicness of the image, but something about the rawness and the void makes it a much more troubling image. It’s like a dark mirror held up to painting itself, an ongoing conversation about what it means to be seen.