Having looked at them, I feel profoundly unmoved. They remind me of the patterns to be found on some airplane or bus seats. Is this just a problem of viewing images on the internet?

If this is going to rewrite the history of abstract expressionism, it indicates to me that abstract expressionism doesn’t have much content… Wait a minute, well, you know what I mean. I’m not a big fan of abstract expressionism, but I feel like the genre is getting a raw deal here if it can be taken over by one nut with an attitude.

I prefer Palmer’s linoleum to this work by a vast margin.

You did not tell us whether you yourself like his painting.

An interesting question — can you record your brain processes (while obsessively drawing rectangles with your eyes closed) using computer/electronic technology? And what would you use for a control — eyes open? Circles? Squares?

oops, I think I misunderstood your question — how long would all your brain processes turn into rectangles? Was that it?

I’m afraid I don’t even have a snarky answer <snort> — I’m fond of indeterminate curved lines, myself.

Perhaps you and I aren’t old enough yet to have gotten to the point where we can spend the rest of our lives on a single shape or integrated pattern. Truly I love looking at the colors of black, the shadings that can be created, the textures that pop out in the midst of the monochrome. But I can’t bring myself to create them — I always get distracted. I can like them without emulating, which is a cheerful thought.

I like a Rothko print in my daughter’s office. It is red and cheerful.

But I do find it peculiar that some people are inclined to produce the same type of simple geometric form over decades of their life. Or, like in the case of Clyfford Still, patterns that integrate in similar ways.

The last few days, I have been obsessing over rectangles. If I continue doing that, how long do you think it would it take until, drawing with my eyes closed like Jean Magnano-Bollinger, I would only draw rectangles while recording my brain processes?

It’s his name that gets to me — why not Clifford Styll?

In actual fact, I love Still’s work, always have. But I had no idea that he had done so much. If it gets dumped on the market all at once, of course, its value will be greatly lessened — scarcity being one of art’s presumed selling points.

Now, Birgit, you should try liking Rothko. At the Portland Art Museum there are a couple of all black paintings on heavy paper (each about 10 feet by 10 feet) by one of Rothko’s contemporaries whose name escapes me — Noland? — anyway, they are quite wonderful. Exhibited together, one is at a slightly wonky angle and so a widening white streak of wall can be seen between these two humoungous sheets of interestingly textured black elements. They have a real force.

On the other hand, my smart aleck 12 year old granddaughter said about them: “That’s what gives modern art a bad name.” But I think she was just being snarky.

Isn’t art by definition something ‘unusual’.

You know that I love your abstract photography.

My opinion is that it is better not to get stuck in something: A farmer, only growing potatoes - potatoes of various kinds - would eventually deplete her soil.

Perhaps that is like Rothko painting rectangles that become more and more monochromatic

Yesterday, the NYT had an article on an exhibition of Hélio Oiticica’s work in Houston, including his abstract painting. Today, we hear about Clyfford Still’s work going to Denver. A revival of abstract art in the middle of the country.

His relationship with galleries and museums sounds a little extreme. The ultimate denunciation in the later part of the 20th century must have been to compare something to Nazi gas chambers.

At the danger of beating a dead horse, here we have another artist with a ‘peculiar mind’ who ended up doing only abstract paintings .

Denver seems like a good place for them as they are somewhat above the treeline, Big, Sparse and Rocky, and have, maybe even some underlying Cowboy’s determined independence.

Interestingly, the issue of how they are viewed together has made me rethink the Barnes Collection. I have always sided with the collection staying together (it has been a favorite Viewing Experience) as Barnes insisted but I now wonder: why does he have the final say? Because he had the money to own them? Maybe Renoir didn’t want his paintings to be seen ALWAYS next to a fork, etc.

My thoughs wandered pretty far, eventually ending here: What if I was rich and I really really really despised Still’s work. Does the collector have the right to destroy? What a terrible thought.