Alfred Cohen: An American Artist in Europe - Between Figuration and Abstraction

The open windows show that the viewer is inside looking out, so the sides of the picture frame become the window frame. But the frames of the open windows do two things: the horizontals (especially on the left) suggest the perspective, pointing in the direction in which the painting leads the eye, into the distance of cliffs and hotel buildings. The vertical bars divide the picture surface into a triptych: with the industrial docks on the left; open water on the right; and the main part of the busy harbour in the middle. Again, we see the artist finding different ways of framing subjects within the overall frame of the painting; thinking about which subjects place themselves at the centre of a composition.