Steve Martin Describes How He Looks at Abstract Art

In a colorful episode of the BBC series The Way I See It, the incredibly talented Steve Martin picked out two of his favorite pieces of abstract art at the The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and proceeded to describe them to a British radio audience. As Martin was gazing upon one piece that he’d seen many times prior, it suddenly occurred to him that he was looking at a landscape, describing how the abstract forms of the colors began taking shape in a way that he’d never seen before.

In this episode of “The Way I See It,” actor and comedian Steve Martin looks at paintings by two early pioneers of American abstraction and takes us on a journey of seeing—shape and color transform into mountains, sky, and water.

In the 1991 film L.A. Story, Steve Martin uniquely describes an abstract art painting that “excites” him.