West Street, New York

On this sheet, Marin improvised with his fingers, touching in dots of black, blue, red, and yellow among the wheels of horse carts and trucks rendered in sketchy graphite and purple wash. These small, expressive dots bear the ridges of his fingerprints and appear as partial, repeated marks that at some times suggest movement and at others operate more as punctuation marks, accenting the scene and contrasting with the more rigorously rendered buildings. These touches of bright pigment on white paper act as musical notes skittering across a score, suggesting the interplay of sight, sound, and movement.