Untitled 1971

This untitled print was made by William Dole in 1971, and it’s a delicate dance of color and text. Can you imagine the artist at work? Probably collaging and layering, wiping away and adding, shifting things around until they felt just right. I'm struck by the ghostly overlays, the faint olive green, and the way it seeps across the surface, creating this sense of depth and history. There are touches of red, a splash of blue – like memories bleeding through the pages of a book. The texture feels almost like aged paper, worn smooth by time, or maybe like a fresco! It reminds me of Kurt Schwitters, maybe Robert Rauschenberg, these artists who weren’t afraid to grab bits of the world and stick them together to see what happened. And it makes me think about how we, as artists, are always riffing off each other, stealing ideas, and making them our own. The way Dole uses snippets of text and fragments of images opens a space of interpretation, reminding us that nothing is ever fixed. Isn't that what art is all about?