In Newman's best paintings, such as Cathedra (1950 - 1951) and Vir heroicus sublimis (1950 - 1951), the imagery consists
of a
single field
of color that is inflected by one or two thin
vertical bands.
By taking a square and dividing it this way, Whitney establishes a tension between the container and its interior, which he further heightens by filling the bands edge to edge with endearingly painted, almost lopsided
vertical or horizontal rectangles, each a
single color, that shift in scale and number
of rectangles from one band to another.