Stove c. 1937

Harry Grossen made this rendering of a Stove, and you can almost feel him feeling his way through it. I imagine Grossen, squinting, trying to figure out how to turn this everyday object into something more. He’s using a limited palette, mostly greys, and he's working on the objectness of this stove: the cold iron, the potential heat, the solidity. It looks like he’s really looking, using drawing to understand something about how shapes and forms come together. The way the legs curve, the door hinges. The overall feeling is one of quiet observation, like Grossen took the time to understand this thing. You wonder what it was like for Grossen to look so intently at the object, and what the object might "say" back, like a silent conversation. All art is a kind of exchange, the artist proposing, the object responding. And we, the viewers, get to listen in.