Gene Davis c.1964 Vincent Melzac Collection Washington Color School This is the Agency’s only work by Gene Davis, one of the most noted of the Washington Color School artists. In a conscious effort to “purify” his work, he reduced painting to the fewest possible elements, that of equal-width stripes. He felt that this matrix allowed him to emphasize color orchestration, saying: “I paint by eye as a jazz musician plays by ear.” The stripes, like a drummer’s beat, provide the unity through which colors interact. Such a painting cannot be grasped all at once: Davis suggested that the viewer follow one color across the composition, seeing how the intervals work, what the rhythms are like between related colors. He described it as a kind of syncopation. A Washington native, Davis was a sports writer and a White House correspondent before he dropped that career to become a painter.