Taos #2 1961

Conrad Marca-Relli made this collage, Taos #2, from canvas and oil paint. It's a really interesting beige colour! I love the materiality of this piece, how the canvas has been torn and layered. It’s all about texture, surface, and process; not just looking but actually feeling it all. I imagine Marca-Relli moving bits around, intuitively building up the surface. The white patches peek out from underneath as if he used the canvas itself as a kind of brushstroke to emphasize the shapes. The slightly off-grid arrangement makes it seem like the canvas is almost bursting at the seams. I bet Marca-Relli’s peers, like Motherwell and Kline, were really digging what he was doing. And of course, later artists have built on it, continuing the conversation through colour, texture, and gesture. Like all painting, it's ambiguous, open-ended and ready for you to respond.