Dialogue by Mark:

Aerodynamic design depends on smooth, curved surfaces that allow the air to move over and around the aircraft. The painting in our Master's Gallery today has the same feeling...sweeping stripes of color kind of like air currents moving over an airplane wing. This painting, called "Alpha," was done by the American artist Morris Louis in 1960.

Louis created nonobjective artwork. That means there are no recognizable things in his pictures...no faces or flowers or mountains. The design is made of pure colors and shapes. You can imagine anything when you look at a nonobjective painting. You can imagine airplane wings, or a river, or whatever you want.

Morris Louis invented a whole new kind of painting. He didn't use a paintbrush at all...instead he poured paint down the canvas. He often used very runny acrylic paint, mixed carefully so it would flow and spread out the way he wanted. He called his stripes of paint "veils," like a thin cloth you can see through. Louis carefully turned the canvas one way and the other so the flowing paint would create the shape he wanted...and this was not an easy task, because he made really big paintings. This one is 9 feet tall and 12 feet wide!

Louis was not well known when he was alive. But today his paintings are recognized as masterpieces and hang in many museums around the world. "Alpha" comes to us from the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.