Edward Clark

Untitled (1955)

Artwork description & Analysis: In this photograph, Clark stands in front of his painting Concord, which was the largest work Clark completed in Paris.

Photograph - Artist's collection

The City (1952)

Artwork description & Analysis: The City stands as one of Clark's first major experiments in abstraction. The painting evolved while he was working on a realistic representation of the city; dissatisfied with his results, he proceeded to "destroy" the image with his brush but found he liked the result of his destruction. Executed in an all-over manner, the colors almost appear to be in dialogue with one another.

Oil on canvas - Collection of John and Helen Slimak

Untitled (1957)

Artwork description & Analysis: Although not the first, this work is amongst Clark's early experimentations with shaped paintings. Like many of Clark's works, this piece is large in scale, measuring 46 by 55 inches

Oil on canvas with paper collage on wood - Art Institute of Chicago

Big Egg (1968)

Artwork description & Analysis: This painting is among Clark's early experiments with oval forms. Present is a strong horizontality that is emphasized by Clark's placement of warm and cool colors in individual fields.

Acrylic on canvas - Artist's collection

Untitled: Paris Series 1988 (1988)

Artwork description & Analysis: In this work Clark's departure from the Color Fields of the 1950s in favor of more dynamic tubular forms is evident. Unlike the Color Fields that were more discrete, with minimal intermingling of colors and forms, Clark juxtaposed his shapes and mixed his colors in a way that suggests a dialogue with one another.

Acrylic on canvas - Artist's collection

Pink Wave (2006)

Artwork description & Analysis: A more recent work, Pink Wave reveals Clark's continued interest in the significance of action and gesture and the presence of the artist's hand.

Acrylic on canvas - G.R. N'Namdi Gallery

Mural (1943)

Artist: Jackson Pollock

Artwork description & Analysis: Mural is an early tour de force in Pollock's career, a transition between his easel paintings and his signature drip canvases. This 'all over' painting technique was assimilated from a variety of sources: Picasso, Benton and Siqueiros, as well as Native American sand painting. Measuring nearly 8 x 20 ft, this was Pollock's first large-scale work, and was commissioned for Peggy Guggenheim's apartment. Although influenced by his earlier work in this format, Pollock struggled to control the composition. He incorporated decorative patterns in thinly brushed paint to achieve an intimate pattern within the grand scale. An apocryphal story exists that it was painted in one day and one night, though this is impossible given the quantity of layers in the picture. Gifted by Guggenheim to the University of Iowa Museum of Art in 1951, it was recently rescued from floodwaters in Des Moines.

Oil on canvas - University of Iowa Museum of Art, Des Moines

Four Darks in Red (1958)

Artist: Mark Rothko

Artwork description & Analysis: In 1969, Rothko exhibited ten paintings at the Sidney Janis Gallery; Four Darks in Red were among those shown. With its dark, restricted palette, the picture exemplifies Rothko's late-period gravitation towards reds and browns. It established a prototype for the dark red/brown/black palette and horizontal composition that he would later use in the uninstalled Seagram Building paintings. Although the imagery of pictures like Four Darks in Red seems far distant from that of Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea (1944), Rothko believed that the rectangles merely offered a new way of representing the presences or spirits that he tried to capture in those earlier works. "It was not that the figure had been removed," he once said, "..but the symbols for the figures... These new shapes say.. what the figures said." In this way, Rothko imagined a kind of direct communion between himself and the viewer, one which might touch the viewer with a higher spirituality.

Oil on canvas - Whitney Museum of American Art

Women Singing II (1967)

Artist: Willem de Kooning

Artwork description & Analysis: This work is typical of de Kooning's style upon returning to the figure, which he began to do with a new series of paintings of women, shortly after moving permanently to Long Island. Like his earlier Women series, these are highly abstract,but they are less ferocious, and more obviously eroticized,with bright red lips and long blond hair that border on caricature. They were inspired by watching television and observing the new fashions and pop idols of the 1960s.

Oil on paper laid on canvas - Tate Modern, London UK