“Cadmium Red Above Black”

Here is abstract expressionist Adolph Gottlieb’s most iconic painting:

This is what his work looked like in 1936, when he worked for the Federal Art Project, which subsidized fine artists during the Great Depression. It’s called “Sun Deck”:

Quite a freeing of the spirit over 20 years!

Cadmium Red Above Black screams to me Beatniks, the Zen Buddhism movement, alienation, existentialism, JFK, and the op art and pop art and color TV to come.

Art can both predict and create the future, and not just represent the present.