Untitled
1967
charcoal
From the collection of Museum of Modern Art
1967
charcoal
From the collection of Museum of Modern Art
Dominant colour
Untitled is a 1967 charcoal by Barbara Chase-Riboud, held at Museum of Modern Art.
This sketch looks messy but planned. A tangled web of lines fills the page. Some lines are thick and dark, others faint and wavy. In the middle, a shape almost looks like a building or a face, but it’s hard to tell. The whole thing is drawn in pencil and charcoal, with no clear colors—just shades of gray. The lines overlap in a way that makes it hard to see what’s "under" them. It feels like the artist layered marks to build up the image. The paper shows some wear, too. Try looking up cross-hatching next to see how artists build up dark areas with lines.
