Sombrero (Primary Title)
Harvey Quaytman, American, 1937 - 2002 (Artist)
A painting has to do something; it can’t just sit there; it can’t just be a thing on the wall. It has to go left or right, or up or down. There has to be some possibility of movement. —Harvey Quaytman
Sombrero fills the viewer’s field of visionwith rich blue color and a sense of light, recalling the paintings of Mark Rothko, whom Quaytman deeply admired. At the same time, its eccentrically shaped canvas and textured surface call attention to the work as an object in a literal space, in keeping with Minimalist art of the time. Quaytman’s work often merges these apparent opposites—the purely visual and the physical. Color and shape were determined intuitively, here as a match between the curve’s rightward swing and the “breathing” field of blue. Meanwhile, the surface implies a more systematic, mechanical process, with the wide, regular strokes produced by wallpaper brushes and spray guns.
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