Untitled (New York City) 1945

Beauford Delaney made this painting, Untitled (New York City), in watercolor, conjuring a city scene from his imagination. Imagine Delaney dabbing washes of cerulean blue, rose madder, and sunshine yellow, letting the colors bleed into each other. The watercolor is thin and washy in places, pooling and dripping in others. Look how the street lamps curl like vines, drawing energy from the radiant circles at their bases. I wonder if they might be referencing the sun, a motif Delaney returned to repeatedly in his wider practice. You know, when I look at this, I think of other painters like Kandinsky and Klee, who tried to find the musicality in the world around them. Delaney’s like that too, conducting a symphony of color and light on paper. It is all interlinked and part of a conversation among artists, each riffing on the other’s ideas in a never-ending game of creative telephone. This painting offers us one interpretation, but invites so many more.