Gamma Mu

Rivulets of color cascade from the outer sides of a white unprepared canvas, and converge in the center, forming the shape of a wedge. The various colored streams of diluted acrylic paint overlap in places. The painting ‘Gamma Mu’ belongs to a series of roughly 150 unfurled paintings that Morris Louis produced in 1960 and 1961. They each share the same fundamental shape but vary in the overlaps and intervals between the bands, and the merging and build-up of the saturated colors. Louis gave only two of the paintings titles: ‘Alpha’ and ‘Delta’. Later, he gave the other paintings in the series a title comprising one or two letters of the Greek alphabet. ‘Gamma Mu’ is defined by a marked blending and overlap of color, and the use of heavier hues of brown, yellow and green. The painting demonstrates a fine balance between coincidence and control, and surface and depth, which evokes a sense of infinity.