Downtown New York, Three Movements

This work is noteworthy because it combines recognizable architectural elements (Wall Street and the Stock Exchange) with playful compositional devices, including the enclosure of pedestrians into a box, one of the “movements” of the work’s title. This isolation of a vignette into a square or lozenge-shaped frame became an important approach for Marin, helping him to draw attention to the art as a tangible surface rather than a window onto visible reality; as he put it, “You must be made to see that artist’s scene and not nature’s scene.”