Silver Skies

Snippets of images float by: a squawking bird, tire tread, a red rose, knobby knees, a woman’s eyes, a car door, a glass bottle, and a shiny shoe. Silver Skies presents a sequence of dreamlike images that flitter along like roadside advertisements seen from a moving car. The combination hints at meaning or a story, but ultimately defies rationality or order. When the Sidney Janis Gallery included the painting in the International Exhibition of the New Realists in 1962, it helped launch the Pop Art movement and win critical acclaim. Not everyone was happy, however. Abstract Expressionists like Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell quit the gallery in protest, condemning what they saw as the vulgar commercialization of art.

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