The compositions are grimly serious intellectualizations, likened to music, in inventions and variations concerning processes of change: every step of the convolutions of a progression. The major efforts (with all the accompanying strain which that word implies) are elaborated rhythms of arabesques, sharp angles (preferably diagonals), and organic patterns. Accompanied by their orchestrations of a full color and value range, and maximum two-dimensional plasticity, they recall the controlled chaos of decorative modernism so fashionable circa World War I. This because Ball’s path retraces, in spirit, graphic symbolism drawn from contemplations on nature and the mechanical so widespread among the secondary Cubists, certain of the Futurists, and their American associates, Dove, Stella, and even Burchfield.

Despite the decorative and emotionless results, the intent is ambitious and rational. Where the labyrinthine lines of force are less compulsively subdivided or organized into dominant areas, the results are enormously more memorable. Thus Renascence, Betrayal, and Germination may point towards a realm of more fruitful development. Otherwise we should be able to comment only on his patient, hard work.

—Fidel A. Danieli