Through Sleep to Orange 1968

Curator: Here, we're viewing Alice Baber's 1968 acrylic on canvas titled "Through Sleep to Orange." What's your immediate reaction to it? Editor: It’s incredibly buoyant! The forms seem to float, to almost playfully jostle each other across the canvas. It feels…optimistic. Curator: The painting demonstrates Baber’s exploration of colour field painting with strong abstract expressionist qualities, where forms serve primarily as vessels for chromatic exploration. What semiotic reading do you get from the spherical shapes, as if cells viewed under a microscope? Editor: Well, I wouldn't jump straight to microscopic analysis, as such approaches weren't the norm then, but rather a socio-cultural interpretation—how the late '60s valued notions of fluidity and organic forms in broader cultural currents—might be pertinent. Consider the visual cues echoing themes in counter-cultural movements. Curator: Certainly. But observe how the interplay of transparent and opaque forms disrupts a consistent figure-ground relationship. Baber masterfully uses these overlaps to deny the eye a singular focal point, fostering, structurally, visual democracy. It pre-empts hierarchies. Editor: Interesting point! And those blues and purples shifting into warmer hues – how would you describe the psychological effect? Baber made paintings like these well after the Civil Rights act passed, what's the socio-political mood you might consider in these colour fields? Curator: I appreciate the colour palette contributing to this painting’s success! I see how the strategic placement of that burst of orange at the center could symbolize not just a shift from dream to consciousness as the title suggests but, tonally and structurally, the potentiality of a hopeful new outlook! Editor: That feels right. Baber seems to capture a feeling that was just dawning – the transition from social strife towards a yet-unrealized future of optimistic liberation, perhaps? Curator: Precisely. Its colour is far from flat, the canvas reveals how this transition is possible if sleep delivers something brilliant—something vital—such as orange! It's almost allegorical, not literal! Editor: An elegant point, well made. It’s shown me to better understand the relationship between formal qualities and wider cultural narratives here. Thanks.