Creueta del Coll 1987

With Creueta del Coll, Ellsworth Kelly erected a tall, monumental sculpture in the heart of Barcelona. I bet Kelly thought long and hard about the material: the rusted metal has a certain weight, and the way it meets the sky feels like a real gesture. With its flat surfaces and subtle modulation of light, it reminds me of a pared-down Minimalist painting by Barnett Newman, but in three dimensions. I love how the form tapers to a point at the top, as if to meet the sky in a perpetual reaching motion. You can see that the rust is not just a surface thing. It's a deep transformation, a record of time and weather. There is this exchange between artists, this echo across time and space. Kelly, like the greats, has given us an object that demands our attention. In a world of constant images, this is a moment of quiet looking, thinking, and feeling.