He decided against it, though, because he wanted to develop "a more purely geometric and classical format".⁷⁵

Albers centered his square on the lateral sides only, varying the proportions at top and bottom. Anuszkiewicz's Centered Squares are centered 'absolutely': each side of the inner square is equal to half the length of the parallel outside edge of the canvas. The four corners of the inner square emit radiating lines of alternating colors that generate, at their densest point, "a shimmering color event,"⁷⁶ in the words of one critic, and "luminous nimbi,"⁷⁷ for another, for the effect that scientists call 'film color'⁷⁸ Isolated in a kind of aura of "hybrid colors that could not exist in any other way."⁷⁹ the central square can be seen either as a solid or as a brilliant plane of light. By any standard it is stunning.

"What is it that causes Anuszkiewiczs new works to yield an aura of classicism?" — Gruen posed the question, then answered it — "...a buoyant, floating effect, as though form and space were one and the same — an evanescent commingling of light and weight that, through color and balance, releases a powerful yet subtly graded glow. It is this glowing, hot-cold quality that gives the architecture of the artist's work its substance and energy and, indeed, its classical format."⁸⁰

The Centered Squares assimilate and distill precedent experiences and push fonlvard. When the composition remains fixed, color becomes the variable. Having completed the gamut of warm and cool contrasts in the series of Portals and Spectrals, he concentrated now on the generation and control of film color. In a sense he was returning to refine his experiments of the mid-sixties, which tended to employ three tones of a single red. The Centered Squares treat many different colors, one at a time. In Viridian Square, 1984, the square and its radiating lines are painted in a light green against a darker green background. The density of converging lines at each of the four corners generates a grey-green film color that becomes the paintings third tone. The lines emanating, or streaking to, the square's four corners, coincidentally create an optical effect of seeming to invade the square and connect its opposite vertices with a whitish X. The same' phenomena are observable in Ghostly Gray 1984, Deep Magenta Square, 1984. and the other Centered Squares, many in colors without precedent in his oeuvre. Radiant and mysterious, the Centered Squares are Anuszkiewicz's response to the 'Albers Chapel' of 1965: whenever two or more are exhibited together, they inspire contemplation.

We have seen how the eighties opened vigorously with Anuszkiewicz at the top of his form. A tour to Egypt, taken casually in 1981, became the catalyst for a new series concurrent to the Centered Squares. The Temples are that rarest of entities in Anuszkiewicz's mature work — paintings that refer to real appearances, even if conceived entirely in light and color. They translate into recognizable form one of the most intriguing ideas of the squares: the ambiguity of the central panel, is it a color field or pure light?

"The development that Richard Anuszkiewicz initiated at the beginning of the 1960s culminated between 1981 and 1984 in a series of "temples", among them a Temple to Albers, 1984, and Temple to Mondrian, 1983. In this series, the columnar architectural framework implied by the title, but suggested through purely abstract means, becomes overwhelmed with light. What might at first appear as apertures in an othenlvise solid structure may also be experienced as projecting outward, sometimes with violent intensity...."⁸¹

The framework Margaret A. Miller describes above was developed from a kind of molding long used by the artist, finally receiving its turn upon center stage. The border is composed of parallel lines, narrowly spaced along the edges, that appear to model the volume in the round. When upright, these borders resemble fluted columns. In the Temples, Anuszkiewicz repeats the motif across the composition, separating them with bands of solid color. These apertures, so to speak, are always an odd number, usually three, occasionally one or five. The emphatic modelling of the columnar motifs creates a tunnel-like recession towards the intensely colored band.