One needs to get close to Jules Olitski’s Irkutsk IV to appreciate the lunar quality of its surface, an effect that occurred when the penultimate layer of paint was drying. With the canvas lying flat, the artist applied a thick wash of olive-green acrylic paint. He vigorously stirred air into the mix so that as the paint dried tiny bubbles burst, marking the surface with pocks. A thin, final layer of tan pigment rests on top of the canvas, highlighting these minute craters.

There is a density of pigment in the center of Irkutsk IV, which dissipates toward the edges. Backing away from the painting, we see how pronounced the attention to the edges becomes. Olitski not only used thinner washes of color, but added lines and spots of bright pigment to draw our attention to the periphery. If one looks long enough, the flat painting begins to evoke infinite space, as though one could travel through its center to another place and time.

Olitiski, who was born in Russia, named a series of paintings for a barren portion of Siberia known for its whiteout conditions in winter. Irkutsk IV conjures the unfathomable in nature and allows the viewer to confront that infinite power. Olitski sought to evoke the experience of what art historian Robert Rosenblum called the “abstract sublime,” a reference to the nineteenth-century Romantic ideal of nature as a manifestation of mysterious and awe-inspiring forces.