BARNETT NEWMAN AND THE ZIP

Standing in a parking lot in Maine, I saw the light glint off the chrome on a sports car's hood.

Of course, my first thought was Barnett Newman.

That may seem like an odd association, but Newman spent much of his career exploring the power of a single vertical stripe. He called it a "zip."

Once you become aware of Newman's zips, you start seeing them everywhere. In tree trunks. In telephone poles. In shafts of light. In the narrow gap between two buildings. In reflections running down a pane of glass.

Or in a strip of chrome running down the hood of a bright red sports car.