Painting No. 50 1915

Marsden Hartley made Painting No. 50 with what looks like oil or acrylic, and maybe even casein paint. The colours are laid down raw and direct. Hartley’s applying these shades, smudging them, pushing them around so the colours vibrate against one another. I love how Hartley used geometry to find his own pictorial language. Take the lines, shapes, and zig-zags throughout the piece. Notice their textures and consider them as characters with unique voices, each playing a part in a larger story. For me, this work is like a conversation between different artistic traditions. You can sense the influence of artists like Kandinsky or maybe even Hilma af Klint, but filtered through Hartley’s singular vision. It invites us to embrace the richness of art history while forging our own path.