ART CITIES:N.York-Kenneth Noland
The American painter Kenneth Noland is associated with a number of American Abstract Art Movements, including: the Washington Colour Painter (a mini school of Abstract Expressionism, whose paintings focus above all on the relationship between colour and structure), Colour Field Painting, Hard Edge Painting and Minimalism. As he said “Paintings have their own boundaries, their own zones, their own limits”.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Paul Kasmin Gallery Archive
The exhibition “Kenneth Noland: UNBALANCED” at Paul Kasmin Gallery focuses on Color Field canvases of Kenneth’s Noland canvases from the mid-to-late 1970s. Noland was a pioneer of the shaped canvas, utilizing the forms as a means to generate a singular, unified experience within a color field. The artist considered the composition’s edge to be of equal importance to the center, and his iconic bands of color, known as “Rays” would often populate only the outer reaches of the canvas, as seen in notable works such as “Ring” and “Acute”. His studies deeply influenced his intuitive rather than theoretical approach to understanding color relationships. His palette was offbeat, challenging, and often characterized by surprising juxtapositions. Kenneth Noland first developed an interest in the emotional effects of color and geometric forms at Black Mountain College, the highly experimental school was important to many young artists at this time because of its interdisciplinary approach to art education. Its faculty (which included notables like Willem de Kooning and John Cage) insisted that every student receive a comprehensive education in everything from dance and musical composition to sculpture and easel painting. At Black Mountain College, Ilya Bolotowsky introduced Noland to the Neo-Plasticism and geometric abstraction of Piet Mondrian, while Bauhaus artist Josef Albers acquainted him with the work of Paul Klee. Noland paid close attention to Klee’s subtle nuances of color combined with bold contrasts of positive and negative space, which eventually informed Noland’s own art. In later years Noland credited Albers as the most influential of all his former instructors, particularly in his teachings on the interaction of color. In 1948, after two years at Black Mountain, Noland traveled to Paris and studied under the Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine. Noland would eventually rebel against Zadkine’s Cubist teachings, opting for radically simplified color and form. In 1949 he had his first one-man show at the Galerie Raymond Creuze in Paris. During the 1960s and 70s, they were followed by a more ambitious range of differing geometric motifs, such as Chevrons, and later by minimalist striped patterns on lozenge and rectilinear-shaped canvases. These abstract paintings were designed to explore human emotional reaction to various colour combinations, without distracting the viewer with unnecessary content, or narrative; and to create a sense of movement on the canvas, thus creating an ultra-primitive life form. His innovation of shaped canvases allowed him to vary the boundaries of his works, creating new effects of weight and movement without resorting to traditional illusionism or perspective. Whereas Noland’s Chevrons and Circles series created visual tension between color and blank background, “Vault” is animated from edge to edge with color. And, unlike the square canvases of other paintings, this shaped canvas allows its support to echo and reinforce the wedges of color that are the work’s sole content. By unifying composition and support while eliminating representational imagery, pictorial space, and any evidence of his own brushwork, Noland succeeds in making the interplay of color and form his only subject.
Info: Paul Kasmin Gallery, 515 West. 27th Street, New York, Duration 28/1-27/2/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.paulkasmingallery.com
