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Robert Motherwell made Wall Painting No. IV (in Roman numerals) in 1954. It features a white background with jet-black abstract shapes: wide swaths and thick stripes, a tall crescent, and some improvisational, amorphous shapes. One vertical copper ribbon just left of center accents the artwork. Most of the shapes span the entire height of the canvas. At four-and-a-half feet tall by six feet wide, this painting almost feels like a torn-paper collage. But the gauzy edges of the shapes, bristle lines throughout, and drips assure the viewer this is oil on canvas.

The painting’s expressive white field is divided into three uneven sections by the darker shapes painted on it. The white is occasionally punctuated by razor-thin pencil lines only partially obscured by paint. They are faint and travel across the white spaces horizontally. In the center white segment, areas of blank canvas show through, and other spots near the bottom are smeared faintly with a little bit of black paint.

Here are the shapes and their relationships to each other moving from left to right across the six-foot-wide canvas. A solitary black ribbon creates a border down the left side. Segments of the ribbon’s right edge are chalky against the white field. The next set of shapes include a black crescent laid over a fat copper ribbon. In places, the copper is highlighted with streaks of brighter mustard yellow, and in others, black is mixed in to darken it. Thin pencil lines adorn the right side of the copper ribbon: horizontal, vertical, and bending around. Halfway down, the copper ribbon has been shattered seemingly by a small, lumpy black blob. A pointy, four-sided chunk of copper has split away, and it hangs from the bottom of the black blob. On its right, the blob leans against a hulking black shape that fills nearly the entire right half of the canvas. This last shape is curved on its left side from the top edge to nearly the bottom. It looks as if it could fit snugly into the crescent, if only they were not separated by the black blob and the copper chunk. Pressing against the right of the curve is a thick, black ribbon with a nearly straight edge, save for a soft, round protrusion near the center that nearly touches the canvas’s right edge. Only a sliver of white runs along the right border, wider at the top than the bottom.