Streifen, WZ 1221 1967

Editor: Ernst Wilhelm Nay’s "Streifen, WZ 1221" from 1967… It’s a striking piece. What really grabs me are these bold, vertical stripes of color—red, yellow, blue, with these almost bean-like shapes carved out of them. How do you read this piece, thinking about Nay’s process or overall project? Curator: Indeed. Consider how the verticality imposes a sense of structured rhythm. The stripes are not uniform; they undulate, implying movement within the rigid framework. This contrast generates a visual tension, doesn't it? It suggests an internal dialogue between order and chaos, control and freedom. Are you drawn to the artist's deliberate restriction of color? Editor: Yes, I find the limited color palette very effective! And I was thinking of Clement Greenberg and his essays in the way Nay is asserting the flatness of the picture plane and calling attention to the pure essence of painting… Would you say that these vertical forms exist purely for their own sake or do they represent something beyond themselves? Curator: Formalistically speaking, the stripes are the subject. There's no attempt to represent external reality. Instead, the painting directs our focus inwards, towards the relationship between color, shape, and the surface itself. However, abstraction, even at its purest, inevitably carries echoes of lived experience. Note the careful distribution of color and shape. How do those formal relationships contribute to the work's overall impact? Editor: That's interesting. It almost makes you wonder whether it's a dance between those vertical forms. Now I see more clearly how Nay isn’t trying to reference anything other than color itself! Thanks. Curator: My pleasure. Examining such visual relationships lets us discover the underlying structure of not only this image, but other artworks.