Contact 1957

Bernard Childs made this abstract print titled ‘Contact’ using black ink. Just imagining the making of it, I can almost feel the artist’s hand moving across the plate, scratching lines, building up a field of marks, like a dance between control and letting go. There’s a nervous energy, a kind of all-overness, and a dominant diagonal slash. It makes me think about the act of touching, the way one thing meets another, leaving a trace, a feeling. It reminds me of Cy Twombly’s scribbled paintings, or maybe some of the automatic drawings made by surrealist artists. You can see how artists are in an ongoing conversation across time, riffing off each other’s ideas, pushing boundaries, and expanding our ways of seeing. This piece, like many, celebrates ambiguity and uncertainty, offering multiple interpretations rather than fixed meanings.