The Candy Store

In this painting, Richard Estes scrupulously represents not only the signs, displays, and sugared goods for sale at a New York City candy shop but, in smooth glass reflections, the world beyond the store—the facades of facing buildings and a white parked van. Both the reflections on the store windows and the inside of the store are equally visible and clear. For all of its visual accessibility, The Candy Store is a sophisticated meditation on the processes of sight and representation. It replicates the experience of seeing the store and peering into the window while walking down the street, capturing depth and recession in the depiction of several angled fluorescent lights while at the same time remaining emphatically flat and frontal.