After his first one-man show in 1950, which consisted of energetic abstractions such as this one, Franz Kline was immediately dubbed "the black-and-white artist." During the course of the decade, he continued to explore the powerful and emotional effect of assertive brush strokes rendered in simple black and white. Today he is considered one of the most important of the New York-based Abstract Expressionist artists. Interestingly, it was Kline's habit to name his paintings after they were finished; this image probably got its title because of its chance resemblance to a chair. He said, "If something happens to look like something tangible, this doesn't bother me--but I myself don't use real objects as models. . . . I don't think there is any reason to say 'no' to the figure or to the object, but it so happens that I haven't been working with definite figures or objects."