What Barnett Newman called a lace curtain is in reality a hefty screen constructed from barbed wire and splashed with blood-red paint. Known as an innovative abstract painter, the artist made this sculpture in the fall of 1968 for an exhibition organized by Chicago's Richard Feigen Gallery. The exhibition served as a forum for artists to protest the brutal treatment of anti-Vietnam War demonstrators during the previous summer's Democratic National Convention. Richard J. Daley, then mayor of Chicago, was seen as responsible for the use of violent police tactics.