Alice Tully Hall Sampler 1961

Gene Davis made this painting in his signature style: a series of vertical stripes in varying widths and colours. It’s like a visual melody, isn’t it? A rhythm of colour. I imagine Davis standing before the canvas, carefully plotting each stripe, maybe improvising a little, letting the colours lead the way. Was he listening to music as he worked? I wonder what he was thinking. Maybe about Mondrian, Barnett Newman, or Kenneth Noland? Each stripe is its own character, bold or subdued, and they come together to create a harmony, a symphony. Look at how the colours vibrate against each other: the warm reds and yellows next to the cool blues and greens. And that one black line—what does it mean? It’s like a punctuation mark in a sentence. I love how artists talk to each other across time, and how painting always finds a way to surprise us. It's less about what you see and more about how it makes you feel.