1. Fish Tacos

            Of the many wonderful things about fish tacos, this too is one:  It hardly ever happens that somebody, when confronted with a fish taco, asks, “What is it?”  And if they do, it’s almost always enough to say, “It’s a fish taco.”  Only such people as have never before met a fish taco would follow up that exchange with another question, and—here’s my ultimate point—even for such people, the only possible follow-up question would be, “What’s a fish taco?”  Nobody asks, “I can see it’s a fish taco, but what is it?”

           

Drawings, unfortunately, have it harder.  Faced with a drawing, people do often ask what it is, and then they’re never happy to hear, “It’s a drawing.”  They always ask again, “I can see it’s a drawing, but what is it?”  It’s not enough for it to be a drawing, it must also be something else.

            And there are no limits to what else a drawing can be.  A drawing has the magic power to be almost any thing you want—a horse, a handful of lime blossoms, a black-necked swan—there’s only one thing it can’t be:  It can’t only be a drawing.

(And this isn’t even new.  It’s been over 100 years since Malevich painted Black Square—and the years since Black Square have seen Mondrian’s lozenges and Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square—and yet)

So:  What to tell people who ask of a drawing, “What is it?”—My go-to answer is, “It’s a fish taco,” which is short for, “I gave this drawing the freedom to only be a drawing, the way a fish taco only is a fish taco, without having to be anything else.”

Specifically—and tautologically—each Drawing X only is Drawing X.