Pink Stripe 1960

This is Gene Davis’s ‘Pink Stripe,’ and it's made using vertical stripes of colour. Green, blue, and then, bing, there’s that surprise pink one on the side. I can imagine Davis, brush in hand, setting up a rhythmic dance across the canvas, stripe after stripe. I think he must have had real faith, or maybe even anxiety, in the repetition of the painting. It's so easy to mess up! I wonder if, for Davis, it was like playing scales on the piano, where one colour leads to the next, each influencing the other. I’m drawn to the pink. It's like a cheeky aside, a little rebellion against the order. And it makes me think of other colour field painters, like Barnett Newman, who understood the power of a single stripe to disrupt and activate a space. This conversation between artists—it’s ongoing, a lineage of looking and responding, each one adding their voice to the chorus.