David Carrier reviews Harvey Quaytman: Hone at Van Doren Waxter, New York, on view through April 28, 2017.

Carrier writes: “In the 1980s when I met him, I got to know a great many abstract painters. Harvey was the happiest artist I had the pleasure of meeting. I think, even if you never met him, you can see that happiness in these paintings— which are consistently exhilarating and visually buoyant. And in our art world, that is a great achievement… Some abstract painters of Quaytman’s generation worked in series. And many of his contemporary peers adopted frankly repetitive modes of composition. Refusing to settle down in these ways, he showed that the resources of geometric abstraction are surprisingly rich. Certainly the effect of this group of pictures is visually self-evident—they convey immediate visual pleasure.”