While visiting the “Van Gogh to Pollock: Modern Rebels” show at the Milwaukee Art Museum several weeks ago, I was sitting on a bench about twenty feet away from this painting by Mark Rothko (“Orange and Yellow,” 1956) when a woman moved in front of me to stand directly before the large canvas.

All at once, she became part of a new artwork! The colors of Rothko’s painting had already transfixed me, but when I saw this woman’s green outfit merging with the orange-peach shades of the painting, I was delighted by how the original work suddenly morphed into something completely new. For me, anyway 🙂

I quickly (surreptitiously) took this photograph, and it occurred to me that I could crop it a little (someone’s elbow) and post it in hopes that you might see what I did, albeit on a smaller scale and with colors less striking than they actually were.