Page 60 - Studio International - February 1965

Visual pleasure from austerity-

New York Commentary by Dore Ashton
The spirit of much recent painting is notably austere. paintings are composed of clear successions of chevrons
With the so-called 'hard edge' advent we enter, once charging across the surface. which is treated as a
again. an epoch of denial and refusal. Throughout the · diamond. His instructions vary a little. On one paint­
twentieth century an imperious will to disembarrass ing, the eye is to move in regular rhythms straight
painting of all associative matter has led to cycles of across the horizontal axis. following the bent stripes of
austerity-cycles that come around with significant colour as they march out of the canvas boundaries.
regularity. In another, a large area of unprimed canvas opens
A leading exponent of the new purist approach, airily while the chevrons move asymmetrically away to
Kenneth Noland, exhibits the sum of his denials at one side. Here, the eye has no choice but to move out
the Andre Emmerich Gallery, spelling out an aesthetic with them. In others, there are minor diversions-a
of purge. Noland staunchly refuses to admit that streak or a blur here and there-but the principle of
painting can be anything other than an experience of explicitness and simplicity remains intact.
colours acting in 1·ather limited ways on the surface of In Noland's adamant simplicity I felt the drive of a
his canvas. He absolutely denies the tradition of conscious refusal. a deliberate attempt to shape a
painting paradox-the tradition that maintains that materialistic aesthetic in which matter-of-fact experience
whatever is applied to the plane surface works toward is paramount. It reduces itself to problem painting. The
illusion. Noland limits himself to proving that the plane problem he poses himself here is seemingly: what can
surface can be kept a plane surface if the artist con­ be done in painting if all suggestion of the third
strains his means sufficiently. dimension is ruthlessly eliminated and if the assumption
Most of his paintings, then, are really explicit visual is made that a painting is nothing other than the sum of
instructions; manuals that are clearly. purposefully pleasures in regarding certain arrangements of colours
Peter Agostini compiled so that they may be read as nothing but the I don't deny that Noland is capable of offering
Harlequin, 1964
Plaster 24 in. high straight visual instructions they are. authentic visual pleasure. A comparison of his work
Stephen Radich Gallery The chevrons, for instance: many of Noland's 1ecent with that of a host of artists influenced by him instantly
shows that he is strong and, in a narrow sense. original.
Moreover, unlike the epigones. he has a good instinct
for intervals. Like a good composer. he knows the
value of silence (unprimed areas. subtle plays of
painted whites and natural canvas. etc ) and he knows
how to distribute his notes so that the accents form
an entity. His colours are chosen instinctively, I'm sure
and while he uses them relativistically, like any other
painter, he often suggests fresh effects.
My feeling that Noland refuses to go beyond the
problem he sets himself. that he really doesn't want the
responsibility of making a painting in the old sense
(that is, with an emergent current of emotional
meaning). was altered only when I looked at Mach 2, a
large. elongated lozenge-shaped picture which really
becomes, in spite of itself, a memorable painting. This
happens, I think. because in ranging broad chevrons of
rich deep red, green. brick-red, deep blue with reddish
undertones. and finally, yellow-in that order from top
to bottom-he creates illusion. Since each colour is
adjacent to the next. with no link passages. the surface
remains fairly flat. But since the shape of the canvas is
repeated in the inverted chevrons. a sensation of
expansion occurs, a wing-like movement that induces
a feeling of blissful sailing into space Here, then,
despite the stern intention. Noland admits an increment
of psychological sensation that is not strictly governed
by what is seen as it is seen, but allows seeing to spin
itself into feeling and even association.
Armando Morales· involvement with painting is. by
contrast. notably emotional. This young Nicaraguan
who lives in New York. develops swiftly, moving
in the direction of clarity without a loss of mystery.
The essentials of Morales· paintings are given in
roughly geometric terms-he likes decisive intersecting
lines, rectangular and circular forms-but the coldness
of geometry is always cancelled by Morales· insistence
that even these basic shapes can induce mystery.
In his exhibition at the Bonino Gallery, Morales
showed paintings in mixed media (he uses both plastic
paints and oils) in which his palette is usually limited
to blacks. whites and occasional ochres and scarlets.
Black is conceived as a deeply polished, recessive
surface. It usually serves as a boundless territory, an
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