Deborah Kass made Black and Blue #2 during the first round of Black Lives Matter protests. It's connotations of the rights of Black Americans intersecting with police blue, and of being black and blue from taking a beating, are inescapable. Meanwhile, the color palette of the painting—black and blue—simultaneously references police violence against people of color, and Ellsworth Kelly’s black and blue Minimalist works.

This painting is part of Deb Kass' No Kidding series (2015—Present). One of the defining elements of this series is the incorporation of neon into the paintings. Kass' latest body of work, No Kidding deploys the aesthetic formalism of Post War abstraction, as did her feel good paintings for feel bad times. But now the mood has changed. The palette has shifted to dark colors and the surfaces of the paintings are worn and washed out. Seemingly positive lyrical phrases such as "Happy Days Are Here Again' and "We'll Be Young Forever" contrast with a sense that everything is not alright. The colors and text in all of the works in this series reference issues like women's health, climate change and institutional racism.