Blue Night 1970

Adolph Gottlieb made Blue Night with paint, and maybe a squeegee, sometime in the 20th century. It’s funny, isn't it? How colors can feel so different depending on what’s next to them? That blue, it’s not just blue, it’s like the bluest blue, like a night sky just after sunset. And then there’s that brownish-red circle, just hanging there, not quite touching the top. It’s like Gottlieb was playing with gravity, or maybe the idea of a sun. Then there are those little dark marks at the bottom. I think about Agnes Martin a lot when I look at this. Not that it looks like her work exactly, but she did something similar. You look at it, and then you have to go back to your life and make sense of it. And that, to me, is the whole point of painting, and what makes art this ongoing, amazing conversation.