Coffee 1936

Alfred Bendiner made this print, Coffee, using lithography. Bendiner has this knack for boiling things down to their most basic forms, like stick figures, but with this twist of sophistication. Look at the way he uses the lithographic crayon to create a grainy texture, like visual velvet, giving the figure this solidity, this weight. The way he balances the stark black against the white of the paper really pushes that sense of volume. The darks feel so dense and rich; it's like he's sculpted this character out of pure shadow. And the small white rectangle of the bib is a great counterpoint to the density of the figure, but, it is still grounded with these darker textural elements. It reminds me of Guston, the way he could make something weighty and cartoonish at the same time. There’s this great tension between the simple form and the complexity of the texture.