Colorful Language: Morris Louis, Formalist
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THE WASHINGTON COLOR SCHOOL on View September 9, 2021 – October 23, 2021
For Immediate Release EDWARD TYLER NAHEM PRESENTS PRIMACY: THE WASHINGTON COLOR SCHOOL On View September 9, 2021 – October 23, 2021 Opening Reception: Thursday September 9, 2021 (6:00pm– 8:00pm) (New York) – August 23, 2021 – Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art (ETNFA) is pleased to present Primacy: The Washington Color School, an exhibition curated by Dexter Wimberly of paintings by nine eminent Washington Color School artists: Cynthia Bickley-Green, Gene Davis, Sam Francis, Sam Gilliam, Morris Louis, Howard Mehring, Kenneth Noland, Alma Thomas, and Kenneth V. Young. The origin of the Washington Color School is linked to a 1965 exhibition titled The Washington Color Painters, organized by Gerald Norland at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in Washington D.C. Five of the six artists in the original 1965 Washington Color Painters exhibition are included in Primacy. Artists of the Washington Color School are distinguished by their rejection of gesture in favor of flat, hard-edged planes of color, as seen in Gene Davis’s adroitly executed Red Dog (ca. 1961) and Morris Louis’s Number 19 (1962), two works in the exhibition that create optical effects and showcase the transcendent potential of painting. Hung next to Howard Mehring’s Blue Note (1964) and Kenneth Noland’s Untitled (1965), these deceptively simple compositions radiate dynamism and tension. In the vanguard of experimentation, the Washington Color School artists pushed boundaries with techniques and processes that would lead them to form individual but related styles, all of which emerged in reaction to Abstract Expressionism. This point of origin is clearly seen in the earliest work in the exhibition, Study for Moby Dick (1958) by Sam Francis, an artist associated with both the Abstract Expressionist movement and Post-Painterly Abstraction. -
Kenneth Noland
! KENNETH NOLAND BIOGRAPHY Born in 1924 in Asheville, North Carolina US Died in 2010 in Port Clyde, Maine US EDUCATION & TEACHING 1985-90 Serves on the Board of Trustees, Bennington College, Bennington Vermont US 1985 Named Milton Avery Professor of the Arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York US 1952-56 Taught at the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts US 1951-60 Taught at the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C. US 1949-51 Taught at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Washington D.C. US 1948-49 Studies with Ossip Zadkine in Paris FR 1946-48 Studies at Black Mountain College, North Carolina US SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2019 Kenneth Noland, Almine Rech, Paris FR 2017 Kenneth Noland: Cicles - Early + Late, Yares Art, New York US Kenneth Noland, Pace Prints, New York US Kenneth Noland: Into the Cool, Pace Gallery, New York US 2016 Kenneth Noland: Unbalanced, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York US 2015 Kenneth Noland: Color and Shape 1976–1980, Castelli, New York US Kenneth Noland: selected Works 1958-1980, Cardi Gallery, Milan IT ! ! ! 2014 Kenneth Noland: Handmade Paper and Monoprints 1978-1984, Meredith Long & Company, Houston US Kenneth Noland: Paintings 1975-2003, Pace Gallery, New York US 2012 Kenneth Noland: Mysteries, Full Circle, Yares Art Projects, Santa Fe US 2011 Kenneth Noland: Paintings 1958-1968, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York US 2010 Kenneth Noland, 1924-2010: A Tribute, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York US Kenneth Noland: A Tribute, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston US 2009 Kenneth Noland: Shaped Paintings -
National Gallery of Art Postage Washington, D.C
National Gallery of Art Postage Washington, D.C. 20565 and Fees Paid Official Business National Penalty for Private Use, $300 Gallery of Art Third Class Bulk Rate Return Postage Guaranteed CALENDAR OF EVENTS October 1976 National Gallery of Art October 1976 MORRIS LOUIS: MAJOR THEMES AND VARIATIONS Sixteen paintings by Morris Louis (1912-1962), an internationally recognized contributor to the history of modern painting who helped found the Washington Color School, continue on view in galleries 68 through 71. This exhibition is the second in a series organized by the Gallery on aspects of twentieth-century art. Of the paintings in the Louis exhibition, three have never been exhibited or published before: Dalet Tet, a black Veil painting; Janus, an exploration of varying TITIAN. The Triumph of Christ (detail) values of green; and Alphard, which is composed Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin asymmetrically around an intense purple stripe, a TITIAN AND THE VENETIAN WOODCUT compositional format previously not seen in Louis' To mark the international Titian quadricentennial work. Also on view is Beta Kappa, a gift to the Gallery by celebration, an exhibition of 113 woodcuts by Titian and Mrs. Marcella Brenner, the artist's widow. National other Venetian artists will go on view at the The paintings date from the artist's last eight years Gallery October 30 in galleries 23 through 28 on the (1954-1962) and demonstrate Louis' most important of Main Floor. As part of the Gallery's reinstallation contribution to the history of modern painting the its Northern Italian paintings, thirteen works by Titian exploitation of unprimed canvas stained with thinned from the collections, including Venus with a Mirror, paint so that color becomes the dominant element. -
Golden Artist Colors Sind Es Die Künstler, Die Unsere Kreativen Prozesse Inspirieren
GOLDEN ARTIST ACRYLFARBEN HANDBUCH (... was Sie schon immer über Acryl wissen wollten) HERZLICH WILLKOMMEN Hier bei Golden Artist Colors sind es die Künstler, die unsere kreativen Prozesse inspirieren. Viele unserer Produkte, sogar ganze Produktlinien, wurden zunächst als Reaktion auf die Bedürfnisse eines Einzelnen oder einer kleinen Künstlergruppe entwickelt. Das ist nicht lediglich unser Vermächtnis, sondern auch eine Tradition, die wir aufrechterhalten. Wir messen den engen, persönlichen Beziehungen, die wir über die Jahre hinweg mit Künstlern entwickelt haben, großen Wert bei, und wir beziehen sie weiterhin in viele Aspekte unserer Produktionsprozesse ein. In der kurzen Zeit unseres Bestehens ist unser Unternehmen schnell gewachsen und im Rahmen dieses Wachstumsprozesses haben wir auch die Angebotspalette unserer Dienstleistungen erweitert. Neben den Kunstmaterialien, die wir herstellen, bieten wir eine Reihe von Ressourcen für Künstler, Kunstrestauratoren und die Kunstgemeinde. Wir haben versucht, diese Ressourcen in dem nachfolgenden Artikel zusammenzufassen, um Ihnen einen Überblick über das zu geben, was wir bei GOLDEN tun. Einzelne Textpassagen machen Sie vielleicht neugierig und können als Bezugspunkte für weitere Informationen, die zu dem jeweiligen Thema erhältlich sind, angesehen werden. Bitte zögern Sie nicht, sich mit uns in Verbindung zu setzen – wir freuen uns darauf, Ihnen bei all Ihren Fragen behilflich sein zu können. Die Künstler zeichnen in ihren Werken auf, was wir sind und was wir in unseren kühnsten Träumen erreichen wollten. Als Hersteller von Materialien, die die Grenzen der Kunst durchbrechen, sind wir dafür verantwortlich, die Beständigkeit dieser Materialien zu gewährleisten. Wir setzen uns mit allen Mitteln dafür ein, Materialien zu produzieren, mit denen die modernsten Ideen erfolgreich aufgezeichnet werden können – in Zusammenarbeit mit den Künstlern, die durch ihre Arbeit unser Vermächtnis an zukünftige Generationen vermitteln werden. -
The Canonisation of Surrealism in the United States
The canonisation of Surrealism in the United States Sandra Zalman In a pointed assessment of the first show of Surrealism in New York, in 1932, the New York Times art critic asked, ‘How much of the material now on view shall we esteem “art,” and how much should be enjoyed as laboratory roughage’?1 The question encompassed the problem Surrealism posed for art history because it essentially went unanswered. Even after the 1936 endorsement by the Museum of Modern Art in a show organized by its founding director Alfred Barr (1902-1981), Surrealism continued to have a vexed relationship with the canon of modern art. Above all, the enterprise of canonisation is ironic for Surrealism – the Surrealists were self-consciously aiming to overthrow the category of art, but simultaneously participating in a tradition of avant-gardism defined by such revolution.2 Framing his exhibition, Barr presented Surrealism as both the most recent avant-garde export, and also as a purposeful departure from the avant-garde’s experimentation in form. Instead, Barr stressed that Surrealism focused on an anti-rationalist approach to representation. Though Barr made a strong case to integrate Surrealism into the broader understanding of modernism in the 1930s, and Surrealism was generally accepted by American audiences as the next European avant-garde, by the 1950s formalist critics in the U.S. positioned Surrealism as a disorderly aberration in modernism’s quest for abstraction. Surrealism’s political goals and commercial manifestations (which Barr’s exhibition had implicitly sanctioned by including cartoons and advertisements) became more and more untenable for the movement’s acceptance into a modern art canon that was increasingly being formulated around an idea of the autonomous self-reflexive work of art. -
Color Field, Then And
Color Field, Then and Now I fear that the visual culture in which these works were admired is now one of those distant “you had to be there” moments, which are impossible to reconstruct. by David Carrier March 7, 2020 Paul Feeley, Formal Haut, 1965, oil-based enamel on canvas, 60 x 60 inches The Fullness of Color: 1960s Painting at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, is a small catalogue-less exhibition that presents a large roomful of Color Field paintings. The show includes Kenneth Noland’s “Trans Shift” (1964), in which a suspended blue and green chevron, set on the white canvas ground, reaches almost to the bottom edge of the frame; Jules Olitski’s “Lysander-I” (1970), where the reddish mist in the upper right quadrant slowly fades into yellow; Alma Thomas’s “Cherry Blossom Symphony” (1972), with a violet background on which small marks of dark blue are superimposed — they look a little like the lozenges in some of Larry Poon’s early paintings. (Thomas actually is the most interesting artist here. Her presence puzzles me, for I don’t usually associate her with these other Color Field painters.) In Morris Louis’s “I-68” (1962), a field of thinly painted colors descends vertically. And Helen Frankenthaler’s “Canal” (1963) sets an irregularly shaped orange-yellow form of billowing color in front of a blue patch and, at the top, behind a dark grayish form. And there are two minor paintings, Gene Davis’s big “Wheelbarrow” (1971) and Paul Feeley’s decorative “Formal Haut” (1965). A review should focus on the art displayed. -
Michael Clark (A.K.A
ARTIST MICHAEL CLARK: WASHINGTON April 3 – May 27, 2018 American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center Washington, DC ALPER INITIATIVE FOR WASHINGTON ART FOREWORD Michael Clark (a.k.a. Clark Fox) has been an influential figure in the Washington art world for more than 50 years, despite dividing his time equally between the capital and New York City. Clark was not only a fly on the wall of the art world as the last half- century played out—he was in the middle of the action, making innovative works that draw their inspiration from movements as diverse as Pop Art, Op Art, Conceptual Art, Minimalism, and the Washington Color School. The result of this prolific and varied artistic oeuvre is that Clark’s output is too much for one show. After consulting with former Washington Post art critic Paul Richard, I decided Michael Clark: Washington Artist at the American University Museum would concentrate on his significant artistic contributions to the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s in Washington, DC. In line with his amazingly diverse and productive career, a conversation with Michael Clark is similar to drinking from a fire hose. In one sentence, he can jump from painting techniques using masking tape to making cookies for Jackie Onassis. My transcription of our conversation, presented here as a soliloquy, tries its best to maintain some kind of coherence and order, but in reality, I just tried to hold on for the ride. In contrast, the amazing thing about Clark’s art is how still, focused, and composed it is. The leaps and diversions of his lively mind are transmuted into an almost classical art, more Modigliani than Soutine, probably reflecting the time spent in his early years copying masterworks in the National Gallery of Art. -
Motivation of the Sign 261 Discussion 287
Picasso and Braque A SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZED BY William Rubin \ MODERATED BY Kirk Varnedoe PROCEEDINGS EDITED BY Lynn Zelevansky THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK DISTRIBUTED BY HARRY N. ABRAMS, INC., NEW YORK Contents Richard E. Oldenburg Foreword 7 William Rubin and Preface and Acknowledgments 9 Lynn Zelevansky Theodore Reff The Reaction Against Fauvism: The Case of Braque 17 Discussion 44 David Cottington Cubism, Aestheticism, Modernism 58 Discussion 73 Edward F. Fry Convergence of Traditions: The Cubism of Picasso and Braque 92 Discussion i07 Christine Poggi Braque’s Early Papiers Colles: The Certainties o/Faux Bois 129 Discussion 150 Yve-Alain Bois The Semiology of Cubism 169 Discussion 209 Mark Roskill Braque’s Papiers Colles and the Feminine Side to Cubism 222 Discussion 240 Rosalind Krauss The Motivation of the Sign 261 Discussion 287 Pierre Daix Appe ndix 1 306 The Chronology of Proto-Cubism: New Data on the Opening of the Picasso/Braque Dialogue Pepe Karmel Appe ndix 2 322 Notes on the Dating of Works Participants in the Symposium 351 The Motivation of the Sign ROSALIND RRAUSS Perhaps we should start at the center of the argument, with a reading of a papier colle by Picasso. This object, from the group dated late November-December 1912, comes from that phase of Picasso’s exploration in which the collage vocabulary has been reduced to a minimalist austerity. For in this run Picasso restricts his palette of pasted mate rial almost exclusively to newsprint. Indeed, in the papier colle in question, Violin (fig. 1), two newsprint fragments, one of them bearing h dispatch from the Balkans datelined TCHATALDJA, are imported into the graphic atmosphere of charcoal and drawing paper as the sole elements added to its surface. -
Bulletin #3. Peeling Back Robert W. Newmann
Peeling Back RoBeRt W. NeWmanN �NarRatiVe PoRtfOlio by Antonia 1. 1 Dapena-Tretter dRoSte eFfeCT �BULLETIN 3 Peeling Back RoBeRt W. NeWmanN �NarRatiVe PoRtfOlio 3 WaSHingtoN InStaLlation art: 1. 2 COlor ScHoOl SuBtracTive RoOts: The EaRly LaYeRs 24 ARROws 7 ImmaTeRial Embracing the ScUlPtureS: Literal: ADditive CoNCePtUal Layers 15 CONcluSiONs 38 Peeling Back RoBeRt W. NeWmanN �NarRatiVe PoRtfOlio — by Antonia Dapena-Tretter Abstract Unpacking Robert W. Newmann's portfolio requires a layered approach with equal attention paid to biography, aesthetics, and the larger art market of the 1970s to the present. These diverse methodologies intertwine to reveal the artist's surprising rejection of the Washington 1. 3 Color School tradition of ethereal stained canvases in favor of the real space of large-scale installations. Literal layers—taking the form of pigment added to the canvas or inches of substrate sandblasted away— Bulletin 3 separate Newmann's art from that of his teachers and serve as a common thread, tying together enormous shifts in practice and medium. Although each period of the artist's oeuvre reinforces his strong attraction to the experiential, the unexpected challenges of wedding an artwork to the space around it ultimately drove Newmann to accept and embrace the unavoidable nature of the immaterial. Peeling Back Robert W. Newmann — Narrative Portfolio Washington Post critic Paul Richard theorized that 1960s D.C.-based artists such as Kenneth Noland, Thomas Downing, and Gene Davis «worked from a particular sensibility, nourished by the grids and circles of the original L’Enfant plan.»1 If this is taken to be true, the hard- edged lines of the Washington Color School canvases were born from the same inspiration as Robert Newmann’s For Pierre L’Enfant (pic. -
Primitivism" In2 0 T H Century
TH THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART PRIMITIVISM" IN 20 CENTURY ART 11 WEST 53 STREET NEW YORK, NY 10019 Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (212) 708-940U FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August, 1984 No. 17 NEW EXHIBITION OPENING SEPTEMBER 27 AT MUSEUM OF MODERN ART EXAMINES "PRIMITIVISM" IN 20TH CENTURY ART Few if any external influences on the work of modern painters and sculptors have been more critical than that of the tribal arts of Africa, Oceania and North America. Since the turn of the century when Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse, and others first acquainted themselves with masks and sculptures from these areas, modern artists have continued to display strong interest in the art and culture of tribal societies. The term "primitivism" is used to describe the Western response to tribal cultures as revealed in the work and thought of modern artists. Recognizing the importance of this issue in modern art history--and the relative lack of serious research devoted to it--The Museum of Modern Art in New York this fall presents a groundbreaking exhibition that underscores the parallelisms that exist between the two arts. Entitled "PRIMITIVISM" IN 20TH CENTURY ART: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, the exhibition, which opens on September 27 and runs through January 15, 1985, is the first ever to juxtapose modern and tribal objects in the light of informed art history. William Rubin, head of the Museum's Department of Painting and Sculpture and director of the landmark 1980 Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective, has organized the show in collaboration with Professor Kirk Varnedoe of New York University's more/ The exhibition and its national tour are sponsored by Philip Morris Incorporated. -
Clement Greenberg “Modernist Painting”*
Summary: Clement Greenberg “Modernist Painting”* The Definition of “Modernism” Greenberg’s concern in this essay is to argue that there is a logic to the development of modern- ist art and, in particular, modernist painting. He identifies the essence of Modernism as “the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself—not in order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence”. (85) It is the intensification of a self- critical tendency that began with the eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. “Modernism”, Greenberg tells us, “criticizes from the inside [rather than from the outside], through the procedures themselves of that which is being criticized.” (Ibid.) This starting point has impor- tant implications for the thesis of autonomy. [See the handout on Clive Bell: “The Aesthetic Hy- pothesis”.] Self-Justification According to Greenberg, every “formal social activity” requires a rational justification, i.e. there must be reasons given to justify a particular activity. Without this justification, the activity in ques- tion (e.g. painting, philosophy, physics, poetry, mathematics, etc.) is discredited and weakened. Many take the view that this is what happened with religion. Post-Enlightenment art (i.e. roughly speaking, art produced after the Eighteenth Century) was at once in precisely this situation of needing a justification. Thus, it was called upon to establish its own autonomy by means of a “deduction”, i.e. an argument for its legitimacy and its capacity to provide us with experience that cannot be obtained through any other art or social practice. -
Grade 1, Lesson 6, Louis
1 First Grade Print Alpha-Pi (1960) By Morris Louis (Loo –is) Technique: acrylic on canvas Size: 102 ½” x 177” Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Art Style: Abstract Expressionism – Color Field OBJECTIVES: The students will be introduced to the work of Morris Louis. The students will define the term “abstract” as it relates to visual arts. The students will describe Louis’ staining technique. The students will examine Louis’ color choices. The students will analyze Louis’ compositional choice in his work, Alpha-Pi. The students will apply watercolor paint to paper in a similar way to Louis’ technique. The students will explore color and composition in their artwork. ABOUT THE ARTIST: Morris Louis (1912-1962) was an American Abstract Expressionist painter. As an Abstract Expressionist, Louis created artwork that did not represent identifiable subject matter, but instead he expressed his feelings through color and line. He studied at the Maryland Institute of Fine and Applied Arts. Louis was part of a group of artists who developed “color field” painting. This type of painting was characterized by solid planes of fluid paint and intense color. Louis wanted to communicate purely through color, and he also experimented with “empty” space in his compositions. (See other images of Morris Louis’ artwork in the “Support Materials.”) Alpha Pi is a large work of art. It is a little over 8 feet in height and 14 feet in length. Louis had a very small studio and didn’t have enough room to spread out his canvas so he kept it folded. He could paint on only one portion of the canvas at a time.