Morris Louis, Tet, 1958

David Breslin: I love these paintings because I have such a hard time—when looking at it—understanding how he made it. 

Narrator: David Breslin is the DeMartini Family Curator and Director of the collection. 

David Breslin: Even when you realize or find out that he makes a painting like Tet by pouring paint onto the canvas, letting that paint really seep into the canvas and stain it. Even though I know that’s how he’s achieved what's happened in the painting, I’m still blown away by the unknown of the work. I think that’s why this painting has caused critics, particularly at the moment in which it was made, to describe some of them as having this, quote-unquote, “chromatic mysticism.” I love that idea because the chromatic, the idea of the color, is very material. But then pair it with this idea of mysticism. Something we don’t know, that's out-of-hand ,that calls us out of this earth, that imagines that there’s something more than or different than the material—is really fitting to this painting, one’s experience of viewing it.