This mixed-media work by Raymond Saunders (b. 1934, USA) is an iconic representation of the artist’s visual language, featuring such emblematic elements as a roughly painted black background, semi-abstract painted forms, line drawings, and collaged images from the mass media.

Like so many of the artist’s works, this piece is untitled. About his practice of not titling his works, Saunders said, “I don’t want [viewers] to know anything; there’s nothing to know. The art is the reality.”

Content is ever present in works such as this one, as the news clippings are clearly legible, and interconnected to various figurative and symbolic aspects of the composition. Saunders doesn’t deny the presence of meaning and narrative in his work, rather he embraces its open-ended nature, and invites viewers to construct their own relationship to the work.

Saunders first emerged as an influential abstract artist in the 1950s. His practice includes painting, collage, assemblage, sculpture and drawing. He incorporates found objects, magazine photographs, chalk drawings, as well as traditional paints that are often dripped, splattered and clumped onto the surface.

The visual spaces in Saunders compositions are layered and highly emotive, conveying a sense of energy and tension. The imagery suggests a world hinging on the border between life and death, or chaos and control.

About the process of painting, Saunders has said, “for the one thing that someone sees, there are innumerable things that they never see.”