Untitled 1968

This Untitled artwork by Dale Hickey is made with paint. I’m imagining Hickey starting with that big, buttery field of brown, like a wall, or maybe a floor? Then those blue squares pop in up top, almost like tiles, each one catching the light a little differently. You can see the hand in it, you know? How the colors blend, how each square is just a bit off from the next. I'm getting a chill De Chirico vibe from it. The kind of painting that makes you think about space, and like, what’s real and what’s not. It makes me wonder if Hickey was thinking about Donald Judd and those stacks of boxes, or maybe Agnes Martin and her grids. It's like they're all talking to each other, trying to figure out what painting can do. And that's the thing about painting, right? It's never really done. It just keeps changing as we look at it, as we bring our own stuff to the party.