In 1967, art critic Hilton Kramer reflected on Richard Pousette-Dart’s evolving engagement with the cosmos, observing that while the artist’s imagery had grown increasingly celestial, his fundamental purpose remained constant, “to make of painting a highly personal record of a spiritual state” [1]. Pousette-Dart’s artistic trajectory was therefore not merely a formal evolution but a sustained effort to visualize the immaterial forces that give life its meaning.

The art historian Robert Hobbs later expanded upon this insight, noting that Pousette-Dart’s fascination with the cosmos coincided with the public’s awe during the Space Race. While society looked outward toward the stars, Pousette-Dart turned inward, approaching the universe as a site of metaphysical discovery rather than technological achievement. His art became a bridge between scientific curiosity and spiritual revelation.

Throughout his career, Pousette-Dart explored how atomic and cosmic energy could serve as metaphors for divine presence. Early works gave visual form to this idea, suggesting that even within the smallest particle resides a trace of God. For him, unlocking the atom was akin to glimpsing the invisible force that binds the universe together. “After being in the night,” he wrote, “you like the sunlight.” In another poem, he summarized his artistic aim succinctly:

Art makes opacity Luminous.
Art makes the unreal real
Art gives to a Dark World the
luminous internal light. [2]

By the 1960s and 1970s, Pousette-Dart had achieved both artistic maturity and institutional recognition, marked by his Whitney retrospective, inclusion in major museum collections, and his teaching career at Bard College. Radiance (Blue), provides a quintessential example of his mature style, defined by a pointillistic application of bright, unmixed pigment, in this case nearly all done in a saturated blue. Pousette-Dart’s tactile paint application creates a shimmering surface that seems to vibrate, or radiate, with inner light, inviting viewers into a meditative encounter with color and energy.

Central to Pousette-Dart’s late work was the circle—a form he regarded as a symbol of eternity and renewal. In adopting a pointillist technique, he often filled entire canvases with thousands of tiny circular dots. In Radiance (Blue), the circle lies at the center of the composition, a bright light expanding outwards. As one critic has noted, Pousette-Dart sought “to pull the eye and mind of the viewer into a transcendental space in which mystic truth awaits,” aligning himself with artists like Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky, who likewise aimed to express “things of the spirit.” [3] Ultimately, Pousette-Dart’s paintings merge the scientific, the spiritual, and the aesthetic into a single vision of cosmic unity. His body of work, including Radiance (Blue) offers not a record of the external world but an illumination of the invisible—a meditation on the radiant energy that connects all forms of existence.

[1] Hilton Kramer, “Art: Spirit and Substance,” The New York Times, November 18, 1967, 31.

[2] Darrell D. Davisson, Art After the Bomb: Iconographies of Trauma in Late Modern Art (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2009), 118.

[3] “The Art of Richard Pousette-Dart Is On Point,” IdeelArt (blog), February 1, 2019, https://www.ideelart.com/magazine/richard-pousette-dart.