American Art Collaborative

“I start moving pieces of wood around, like on a chess board,” Langlais explained of his wood paintings, and “soon the form or subject starts to reveal itself.” Though the results of this process were at first abstract, he called attention to the subtle, figurative elements that emerged by attaching evocative, often tongue-in-cheek titles to his works. Here, Pig in a Poke likely comes from the hemmed-in porcine shape assembled from blond shards, but it’s also a figure of speech referring to something of low quality, purchased in haste and resulting in buyer’s remorse. Titles like these reinforced Langlais’s playfulness, which distinguished him from other assemblage artists, whose somber tone responded to what artist Allan Kaprow called “the nameless sludge and whirl of urban events.”