Dark Figures 1961

Rico Lebrun made this lithograph called Dark Figures, and it's all about how marks can conjure forms, feelings, the whole shebang. The way Lebrun layers the ink, it's like he's carving into the light. See how the figures emerge from this shadowy soup? There's a real tension between what's revealed and what's hidden, like a half-forgotten memory. The marks are so raw, so immediate, you can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the stone. There's this one spot, right above the figure on the left’s chest. The dark ink is scumbled and scratched. It's like a concentrated burst of energy that seems to anchor the whole composition. Lebrun’s got some Goya in him, that same sense of the grotesque, the tragic. But he also reminds me of Philip Guston, in the way he uses figuration to explore the darker sides of human existence. Art, right, it's not about answers, it's about wrestling with the questions.