Artwork
Untitled
Untitled is an ink drawing by Lee Mullican. It dates from 1947 and is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
About this work
Overview
Executed on paper, the work embodies the experimental ethos of the Dynaton Movement, which Mullican helped shape through his dual roles as artist and educator.
Created in 1947, this ink and ink wash drawing by Lee Mullican is a quiet but forceful example of postwar abstraction. Executed on paper, the work embodies the experimental ethos of the Dynaton Movement, which Mullican helped shape through his dual roles as artist and educator. Its spontaneous, unpolished surface reflects a deliberate rejection of formal precision in favor of intuitive expression.
Subject & Meaning
The central form resembles a distorted, suspended object—neither clearly organic nor mechanical—evoking a sense of decay or transformation. A dark, turbulent void at its center suggests an inward collapse or unseen force. The ambiguity of the shape resists fixed interpretation, aligning with Dynaton’s interest in symbolic, non-representational imagery drawn from myth, psychology, and the subconscious.
Technique & Style
Mullican employed rapid, uneven ink strokes and layered washes to create a texture of erosion and instability. Smudges and bleed marks amplify the sense of impermanence, while the fading tonal gradients give the form an ethereal, ghostlike presence. The drawing’s raw execution prioritizes gesture over control, emphasizing process as a conduit for emotional and spiritual inquiry.
History & Provenance
Made during Mullican’s early career, this work predates the formal naming of the Dynaton Movement but anticipates its core principles. It emerged from his San Francisco circle, where artists explored non-Western symbolism and surrealist automatism. Though undocumented in major exhibitions at the time, it remains a key artifact of his personal development and the movement’s formative phase.
Context
In the late 1940s, West Coast artists sought alternatives to East Coast abstraction, turning toward mysticism, indigenous art, and psychoanalysis. Mullican’s work, alongside peers like Wolfgang Paalen and Gordon Onslow Ford, engaged with these ideas through intuitive mark-making. This drawing reflects a broader cultural shift toward art as a vehicle for inner experience rather than external representation.
Legacy
Though less known than his contemporaries in New York, Mullican’s drawings like this one influenced later generations interested in process-based abstraction and the spiritual dimensions of mark-making. His commitment to experimental forms helped bridge Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and the rise of West Coast conceptual practices in the decades that followed.
Artist & collection
Artist
Lee Mullican (December 2, 1919 – July 8, 1998) was an American painter, curator, and art teacher.
