Paragraph (1960 No. 1)

Date:	1960
Medium:	Oil on canvas
Size inches:	48 x 37 1/2
Size cm:	122 x 95.1
Signature:	Inscribed on the reverse
Location:	Allan Stone Collection, courtesy: Allan Stone Projects, New York

Allan Stone Collection, courtesy: Allan Stone Projects, New York.Inventory Number   .

In my painting I work on a theme, one painting moving me forward to the next.
With the "Paragraph" series, each painting had the title "Paragraph."Paragraph No. 1 was the first painting of a paragraph completed in the year 1962. It was followed by Paragraph No. 2, 1962, etc. I didn’t sign any of these paintings because I didn’t want any word to be readable. They are all inscribed on the reverse.

Paragraph No. 1, 1962, is underpainted with impasto white horizontal bars.
After the painting dried, I thoroughly painted over the surface with black.
Then, while it was still wet, I scratched through the black paint with the side of a palette knife, inscribing the calligraphic marks. This second application all had to be done on the same day before the black paint dried.

As you can see, the impasto bars guided me in making the horizontal calligraphic lines.
That gave me my image of handwriting on lined paper. You ask, was I working from a specific earlier text. No, this is my own callligraphic gesture. The “writing” is not meant to be read or readable.The painting is meant to be seen as an image of “handwriting,” an image of a paragraph. This paragraph is indented paragraph-like at the upper left.

I could not have done this painting, and my other paragraph paintings had I not done my 1959 Letter to Mark Tobey.
I was living on Avenue B in 1959. In 1960, I moved to a loft at 65 Fulton Street, already engaged in making paintings of non-readable writing. See the attached Paragraph1960. The image is again a sheet of lined paper. This painting is underpainted in flat white. With blue paint I plucked the horizontal lines onto the dry surface with a tight paint-soaked string. The chance wet deposits of blue have the look of handwriting on mechanically given horizontal lines.

My calligraphic paintings have an ancestry in the paintings of Mark Tobey. I was also looking at Bradley Walker Tomlin’s paintings with admiration. I first saw Cy Twombly’s work at Leo Castelli’s Gallery sometime in 1963. By then I had completed my series of calligraphic paintings of “writing” and was incorporating images of paintings. See Double Landscape and Dutch Landscape. My 1963 show at Allan Stone Gallery included both the paragraph paintings and the paintings combining an image of “writing” with an image of a “painting.”