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May 2003 Washington, DC Thomas Downing at Conner Contemporary and Howard Mehring at the Catholic University

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May 2003 Washington, DC Thomas Downing at Conner Contemporary and Howard Mehring at the Catholic University May 2003 Washington, DC Thomas Downing at Conner Contemporary and Howard Mehring at the Catholic University by Michael Duncan With the rekindling of interest in the connotations and implications of color – for art history, theory and contemporary practice – the experiments of the so-called Washington Color School of the 1960s have taken on a new relevance. In these small concurrent surveys of works by two less-celebrated peers of Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, viewers saw form variously manipulated to focus attention on color’s essential properties. Howard Mehring (1931-1978), who studied with Noland at Catholic University in the ‘50s, specialized in saturated colors in allover compositions made up of stippled strokes. Thomas Downing (1928-1985) arranged small dots of pure color on unprimed canvas to generate optical contrasts and illusionistic depths of field. Mehring daubed paint, likewise on raw canvas, in irregular layers, achieving soft, atmospheric fields of color. Monochrome works in red, golden brown and blue from the late ‘50s appear as rich, materialized veils of color. A gorgeous untitled work from 1958 layers orange over red to create a luscious, blanketlike texture of vibrant tonalities. In subsequent works, he geometrically structured the stippled monochromes to toy with color contrasts. Primal (1961-2) presents concentric squares of red and black, orange and purple, and blue and yellow, the juxtapositions and complements enlivening the simple composition. Slightly later, Mehring began using shapes derived from geometric reductions of the alphabet. Rather than masking off forms or using stencils to create the letters, he glued cut-out sections of painted monochromes. Spring Is (1963) employs green E shapes positioned in the two cavities of a blue H. The rectangular cavities of the E are flecked in yellow. In The Key (1963), an inverted black T anchored at the bottom of a canvas seems to push out from two green mirrored L shapes that abut rectangular orange zones. Wilder visual effects are unleashed in Downing’s dot paintings. In his early works, he seems under Mehring’s spell, employing an allover approach, clustering small circles of three or four different hues. Jade (1959) scatters small overlapping orbs of light green, blue-gray, and powder blue to create a loose atmosphere of delicate pastels. These dense fields seem to deconstruct, or at least loosen up, the notion of “solid” color, playing optical games borrowed from pointillism and the color experiments of Kupka and the Delaunays. More “Op” are Downing’s paintings of multicolored dots organized in straight-lined patterns. Helen’s Eyes (1961) arranges two alternating sizes of dots in concentric squares to create a kind of pulsating effect sustained by regular shifts form light blue to dark blue to purple. A circular arrangement of pink, blue and black dots in Blue Tender (1964) is like an optically loaded gun barrel aimed directly at the viewer. Messing with our rods and cones, Downing’s saturated dots stick around perceptually in afterimages. These two exhibitions, both culled form the strong holdings of local collector Vincent Melzac, are reminders of the wildly underrated appeal of ‘60s experimental abstraction. .
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