Solar Skin 1964

This is Gene Davis's *Solar Skin*, and it's pure chromatic joy – look at how he’s mapped out these stripes. I think about how the artist might have approached the canvas. Did he have a plan, or did the colors emerge organically? He probably built this up in layers, adjusting the hue and tone as he went, like a painterly improv. I’m interested in the slightly different widths of the stripes, which makes it imperfectly perfect. There’s something both playful and rigorous about the composition. I can imagine Davis thinking a lot about Mondrian, and Bridget Riley. Ultimately, he’s after something else here: a kind of pulsating, optical experience. I bet he hoped that the viewer would get happily lost in it, too. It’s a generous act, really – a chance to space out and let the colors do their thing.