Red Target 1962

Francois Arnal made this painting, "Red Target," with paint of some kind, and it looks like he was thinking about artmaking as a process of accumulation. There's something compelling in the way these colors push and pull against each other. The composition invites us to slow down and really look at the physical properties of the medium and the physicality of the canvas. Notice the small rectangles at the bottom of the frame: with thin paint, Arnal used a scraping technique to create the marks. These gestures might echo the thick impasto borders of the rectangles. This piece feels like a conversation, maybe Arnal was looking at the work of Antoni Tapies or Alberto Burri who made art out of found materials. Art is an ongoing exchange of ideas across time. This work shows us the value of ambiguity. There are no fixed or definitive meanings, only different ways of seeing and experiencing the world.