SARAH ROBERTS:  

It’s got a little jazzy quality to it.  

SFX: Jaunty jazz evoking New York in the mid-1930s. 

NARRATOR:  

Shapes and colors, jostling for position. Or is there more to this painting? Let’s eavesdrop on curators Caitlin Haskell and Sarah Roberts. 

CAITLIN HASKELL:  

Gosh. What do you see, Sarah? [Laughs] 

ROBERTS:  

Birds, fish, maybe sails on sailboats. Things kind of fade in and out with different possible interpretations.  

HASKELL:  

One of the things that’s just an interesting anecdote about this piece is that … it’s-it’s reproduced incorrectly more than almost any other painting.  

ROBERTS: Oh! 

HASKELL:  

You always see it sort of flopped or upside-down.  

ROBERTS:  

They’re almost like puzzle pieces that kind of snap together.  

NARRATOR:  

The painting’s by Armenian-American artist Arshile Gorky.  

HASKELL:  

I think so many people if they’ve heard about Gorky, they hear about the tragedy of his life. He’s of Armenian descent and he survived the Armenian genocide. And a lot of his work is sort of, a memory or a celebration of this beautiful childhood that he had in that region that was disrupted in a very horrible way.  

ROBERTS: Right. 

HASKELL:  

And this does seem to be one of the more optimistic-looking, finished paintings. 

NARRATOR:  

Or is it? I mean, it’s called “Enigmatic Combat.” Look on the left, there’s a black rectangle that could be a deep, black pit. And some of those joyful shapes could just as easily be seen as sharp and jagged, like shattered glass.