Micro-Painting 1968

This small painting by Gene Davis is a kind of experiment, a single idea presented as a small yellow ochre square with a pale blue dot. The way Davis has handled the paint here, it's not about hiding the work; you can see the brushstrokes, feel the texture. The yellow ochre isn't flat; it has this handmade, slightly rough quality. Then there’s the dot—a perfect circle of pale blue, like a little portal. That blue, nestled in the ochre, it’s a surprising contrast, a tiny gesture that changes everything. Davis made a lot of stripe paintings but here, with this one small dot, it feels like he's boiled down his whole language into one, simple, powerful statement. It reminds me a little of Agnes Martin’s quiet grids, that same sense of making a whole world out of the bare minimum. Art is always about that conversation, isn’t it, about what we can do with less?