Design for dčor of restaurant, 56 East 56th St, New York, NY.] [Drawing of suggested dčor for restaurant with color elevation and murals 1910

This is Winold Reiss’s rendering of a restaurant interior for 56 East 56th Street, New York, with its bright decorative scheme of colour elevations and murals. I imagine Reiss playing around with ideas here—moving shapes and colors, trialing various surfaces and textures. The paint is laid down in flat planes of red, yellow, and black, each defined with careful precision. Look how the design balances the checkerboard of the upper wall with the frieze of stylized figures near the bottom of the plan. I wonder what Reiss was thinking as he made this? What would it have been like to bring such bold shapes into the rigid architecture of 1950s New York? This plan isn’t so different from the flat, graphic style of Stuart Davis, or the decorative patterning of Sonia Delaunay. It makes me consider how artists are in ongoing conversation, borrowing ideas, and inspiring each other to greater creativity. Painting is an embodied form of expression, embracing ambiguity and multiple meanings.