City Horizon

Mystery Painting Description

by Graham and Clayton

Mystery Painting

recreated by our Walter Hays partners

Our horizontal picture has a lot of rectangles all over the picture. The top third is yellow and it looks like a frying pan with a handle on the left. It goes halfway down the right hand side of the picture. Underneath the yellow on the far right corner there is a green smudge. Inside this space there is a red curved line; the curve points to the right edge, with white on the top left hand corner and bottom right hand corner. The rest of the background is all black with lots of rectangles on it and through it. On the bottom left-hand corner there's a tall yellow rectangle, and in the right hand corner of the yellow rectangle there is a pink rectangle that covers two thirds up the side and goes about halfway to the middle of it. In the middle of the bottom half of the picture there is a big horizontal orange rectangle. Between the orange rectangle and the green smudge a little above the bottom edge of the painting, there is a vertical blue rectangle that goes half the way up the page. Above it there is an almost square yellow rectangle just as thick but half as tall. There is black background between the rectangles. Directly above the green smudge there is a small rectangle that is yellow green, and starting a little above where that rectangle started a yellow rectangle the same size starts. It has a thin blue line on top of it.

A tall green rectangle starts in the middle of the pot's pot part. It goes almost 1/3 of the way down. It is also fat. From the right edge of the green rectangle and down to the top of the blue rectangle, the whole area is yellow. Under the yellow pot, next to the green rectangle, are two rectangles, described from right to left. First is a small yellow one. Next is a little green one just as tall as the little yellow one but half as thick. Next to it is a big horizontal red smudge that goes all the way over one-third of the pots handle. In it, going into the yellow, is a black rectangle the size of the yellow-green one (on the far right). It goes up right out of the red smudge. On top of it is a yellow rectangle. It starts 2/3 with two thin green lines on both of its sides. Touching it to the left is a turquoise rectangle 2/3 as tall as the one next to it, and about as thick as the one next to it with the two lines. Coming out of it at the top, at right angles, is another turquoise rectangle. It goes to the left and is about as big as the one it comes out of. It goes all the way over to the black.

Analysis
by Clayton and Graham

The picture's name is "City Horizon." The artist's name is Hans Hoffman. It is oil on canvas and the size is 50 by 84 1/8 inches. The painting is in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It was painted in 1959.

Our partners did the colors very well. They didn't understand the placement of the top, but arranged the bottom sort of well.

We could have described sizes better, how far apart everything was, and could have been a little more clear altogether. Mostly we didn't do things wrong. It's just that they didn't understand or had mistakes.

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This site maintained by Lucinda Surber. Page finished 5/30/98.