Man Facing Right 1961

Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan made this ‘Man Facing Right’ using lithography, and what strikes me is the cumulative effect of tiny marks. It reminds us that a picture isn’t just one thing, it's built up, bit by bit. Up close, the texture is like rough velvet, a cloud of tiny granules making up the image, light to dark. Look at the way his beard is defined, a mass of marks, darker than the background but still porous, the white of the paper showing through. It's a really physical thing, this print. You can almost feel the grain of the stone, the pressure of the printing press. I'm reminded of artists like Jasper Johns, who built his paintings from small repeated actions. But Kaplan, he’s doing something different, he's making a portrait out of pure process, blurring the line between image and material. He shows us that making art is about more than just representation, it’s about touch, about the slow accumulation of marks, and about embracing the beauty of imperfection.