Sketch of Mark Rotho's "No. 8" 1950

Curator: This is Stuart Davis's "Sketch of Mark Rothko's 'No. 8'". Davis made this work sometime during his career, though the exact date remains unknown. Editor: There's a stark simplicity to this diagrammatic drawing. It feels like the blueprint for something monumental, yet it's so understated. Curator: Davis's sketch offers a fascinating glimpse into his analytical approach to Rothko's color-field painting. Note the annotations "yellow" and "red," and the dimensions of the original work in Rothko's hand. Editor: It raises questions about appropriation and influence. How did Davis interpret Rothko's work, and what might he have been planning to do with this study? It makes me think about artistic dialogue across generations. Curator: Precisely. The focus is less on emotional resonance here and more on dissecting its compositional elements. It's a reduction of the sublime into its bare structure. Editor: Perhaps this was Davis's way of making sense of Rothko's abstract expressionism, a way to ground its apparent simplicity in something concrete. It's a fascinating document of artistic engagement.