1961 – Number 3

During the 1950s and '60s, Ralston Crawford's paintings became more abstract as he filled the picture plane with dramatically cropped shapes, reducing shadows and details to blocks of color. But even these abstract works remained rooted in the world around him, and the geometric, hard-edged composition of 1961--Number 3 appears to show a distorted view from a window. The dashes of white paint in the narrow black rectangle resemble a road seen from above, and the thin intersecting lines near the bottom evoke the shadow cast by sunlight through a window frame. The shapes suggest different viewpoints, as if Crawford combined fragments from different paintings into one kaleidoscopic image.