Experience-Untitled 1957

Avigdor Arikha made this untitled painting with oils, and I imagine a lot of solvent, maybe turpentine, that allowed him to scrub, wipe and re-establish forms, like he was digging for something, rather than building. Look at the browns and ochres, how they're scraped and layered. I wonder what he was thinking as he worked? Maybe he was trying to conjure memories, or feelings, rather than depict something concrete. There is an ambiguity between the background and the foreground. It is not clear if we are looking *at* something or *into* it. There's this red circle hovering in the top right, a spot of bright optimism amidst the earth tones. It reminds me of a similar shape in the work of Philip Guston. It makes me think about the way artists keep each other company across time. They leave traces of their searching on the canvas, and then another artist responds, and the conversation continues.