What you don’t see here are the earnest midtown lunchers seeking out a place to sit quietly and feel an hour’s comfort without expectation.  A park on 23rd Street defines itself by its absences, without grass we are able to see the ephemeral network of shadows that leave no mark of the day’s delimmas or joys.

Piet Mondrian
Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-1943)
Oil on canvas
50 x 50 in. (127 x 127 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Coney Island’s Wonder Wheel, a rete of steel—a radial zigzag; an arced fragment of New York’s subway rete; the red of an otherwise invisible electrical rete; and the window pane made visible by refraction, read by retes of rods, cones, and nerves.