Royal Curtain 1980

Here's Gene Davis, with his "Royal Curtain," made with stripes of bright yet soft colours. It's giving me a kind of chromatic code; I wonder, what's it trying to tell me? Imagine Davis there, armed with his brushes, carefully laying down each stripe. It's like a dance, a back-and-forth between intention and accident. Those vertical lines aren't perfectly straight—they wobble and breathe. They have this cool rhythm, like a visual melody. I'm thinking, maybe he was onto something about how we see, how colour hits us, and how repetition can be both soothing and stimulating. The way he handles the paint is so simple, yet the effect is complex, like a conversation between the colours themselves. It makes me think of Agnes Martin's grids and how she made the smallest mark into a feeling. All these painters riffing off each other, trading ideas across time. Isn't painting just the best? A total embodied expression.