Page 23 - Studio International - May 1965

The new abstraction on the West Coast U.S.A.

Billy Al Bengston There is, in fact, a skilful side-stepping of traditional a reminder of a similar quality inherent in Frank Kline's
Sterling 1963
Oil and Oil Lacquer on Masonite notions of painting or sculptural form. Apart from painting, where without any direct reference, aspects of
60 X 60 in. Robert Irwin's aura of thingness imparted to his large, the urban environment of New York seep into the black
L. M. Asher Family Collection
square canvases by the careful crafting of the deep and white calligraphy. The two, single, slightly profiled
hardwood stretchers, his forms partake of this sense of and narrow lines of paint placed equidistant at the top
denial. The large single fields of colour are not quite and bottom of the painting have no impactual reference
flat, nor is the single colour identifiable. If orange, or to one another, provoking intangibility and the loss of a
apparently so, it dissolves into a blue. r-lis whole range sense of dimension, which serves to disorient an
of colours, by whatever name, have a sensation of observer. To Irwin meaning lies not so much in the
ambience, of the sun-drenched quality of California. It is uncompromising attitude, but the end results. Thus he
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