We’ve spent considerable energy looking at design in painting. All of it from work created decades or centuries ago, until now.
This is ‘Orange Diagonal’ by Ellsworth Kelly from 2008. Plate 1
It’s composed of two painted canvases. An orange rectangle, placed on a white square, diagonally. Seems pretty simple right? Insert my kid could do that quote.
![Plate 1](https://howartworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/E-Kelly-Orange-Diagonal-2019-Plate-1.jpg)
Well, let’s take a closer look. We can see from this that the orange rectangle is actually a √5 rectangle. Plate 2
![Plate 2](https://howartworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/E-Kelly-Orange-Diagonal-2019-Plate-2.jpg)
Now let’s look at all the coincidental geometry between the rectangle and the square. Plate 3
Blue Circle– The top & bottom of the square coincide with the outer 5th divisions.
Black Circle- The primary diagonal of the square coincides withe the 2nd, 5th division of the primary diagonal. Or, they coincide with the center 5th division.
![](https://howartworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/E-Kelly-Orange-Diagonal-2019-Plate-3.jpg)
It also happens that we can use the ‘Blue Circle’ coincident and the corners of the square to construct a Pentagon. Plate 4
![Plate 4](https://howartworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/E-Kelly-Orange-Diagonal-2019-Plate-4.jpg)
Since we know that every pentagon has the elements of a pentagram. Plate 5 And we also know that both the pentagram and the √5 rectangle relate to the ϕ ratio.
![Plate 5](https://howartworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/E-Kelly-Orange-Diagonal-2019-Plate-5.jpg)
The triangles, highlighted in yellow, are each half a Φ Triangle*
The negative is just as important as the positive.
– Ellsworth Kelly
Sometimes things that seem simple are considerably more complex. Maybe even elegant?
* We’ll look at this more in the future.
Addendum- It also turns out that the ratio of the length of the square (A) to the short side of the √5 rectangle (B) is 1:0.617 which is very close to the Φ ratio. Plate 6
![Plate 6](https://howartworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/E-Kelly-Orange-Diagonal-2019-Plate-6.jpg)