Rolled Wrongly 1931

Josef Albers made this painting, Rolled Wrongly, with oil on composition board. The black and white shapes are so clean, like minimalist cartoons or architectural plans. There's a quietness in the way Albers has applied the paint; it's smooth and even, almost machine-like. But look closer, and you can see the subtle variations, the slight imperfections that reveal the hand of the artist at work. Take, for instance, the way the black paint meets the white edges of the scrolls. There's a delicate tension there, a balance between precision and looseness. And those perfectly straight lines that make up the cylindrical forms? They're so precise, but also a little wobbly, like they're breathing. It’s got a foot in both the past and the future. The clean lines and geometric shapes look forward to the minimalist art of the 60s, but the illusionistic space and classical reference also remind me of Giorgio de Chirico's surrealist cityscapes. Art is always a conversation across time, an ongoing exchange of ideas. And in the end, it's the ambiguity, the unresolved tensions, that make it so endlessly compelling.