What becomes strangely moving in this work is the subtle difference between an 89-degree angle and a 91-degree angle - a far cry from the grand gestures of renaissance battle paintings or of some modern abstract canvases .
His early collage canvases included bits of text in his careful , sloping script ; later ones had commentaries written to hang beside them , in conscious imitation of t. s. eliot 's notes to " the waste land " .