Improvisation Number 2

Cool yellows soften into warmer blues and lavenders that draw the eye inward, where pink cascades funnel toward a deep center. Linear fragments also guide the eye to other areas of the canvas: broad swaths of yellow contrast with a dense crowding of shapes and colors. Overall, this creates a spiral pattern of looking. The work's title echoes a modernist trend—of Wassily Kandinsky in Europe and of Stanton MacDonald-Wright in the U.S.—to paint in musical terms. Contemporary treatises on color presented the idea that color is organized like music, in variations of tones, so that paintings blend colors just as music combines notes