Morris Louis, Tet, 1958

David Breslin: One of the things I have always found interesting about Louis’s painting is that he never really let anyone watch him paint, except with the exception maybe of his wife, but he worked within his home. He didn’t have a large studio and none of the rooms in his house were anywhere close to the size of his paintings. So conservators for years and years have tried to figure out how in the heck he did this, and what they really came to discover was that he would roll the canvas in portions and pour, and then unroll the canvas, and then reroll the portion that had dried. What I find pretty fascinating about that—and really fascinating about his entire way of working—is that he himself, while working, never saw the entirety of the painting at one time.