Ishtar Melted,

1965

Olitski’s most important breakthrough came in the spring of 1965, the year this work was created, when, having become unsatisfied with traditional painting tools, he started experimenting with industrial spray guns to apply delicate layers of paint to unprimed, unstretched canvas. This innovative technique, for which Olitski operates up to three guns at a time, allows multiple uninterrupted fields of color to interpenetrate one another, resulting in subtle tonal variations and luminosity. Olitski explained his ambition, stating his desire for his paintings to resemble "nothing but some colors sprayed into the air and staying there." Contemporary critics meanwhile praised the artist as having reached a new height in abstraction, in which even the painting’s surface seemed to dissolve.