The center shape of the two large paintings by Steve Locke represents slave auction blocks: a small square for the auctioneer and a larger rectangle for the many enslaved people. For Locke, the history of slavery is at the center of the sleek, impersonal aesthetics of modernism. When Locke first started painting this series of works, he recognized visual similarities with Josef Albers’s famed modernist painting series Homage to the Square––a study for which is included between the two Locke works.