13939 (_One says …_) 1931

John Elsas made this thing called 13939 (_One says …_) in, well, we don’t actually know when, but look how he put it together! It’s all these stripes and angles and it's like he's saying, "Hey, art can be a puzzle, a construction, a game!" There's something so playful and direct about the way the figure is made, kind of cobbled together from flat planes and lines. The legs are just these red wedges, and the body? It's like a striped, geometric mountain. I can almost feel the texture of the paper, the tiny imperfections where the ink might have bled a little. It makes me think of Picasso's cubist figures, but with a folksy, outsider twist. It reminds us that art is a conversation, a constant remixing of ideas, and that sometimes the most powerful statements are the ones that don't take themselves too seriously.