Page 42 - Studio International - November 1967

2 Albert Stadler these too were rigid formats; but in almost all of them
there were areas of unpainted canvas. Taken along with
Baro: Your first one-man show was at the NEW GALLERY, the painted shapes, the unpainted areas reduced the
Bennington College, in 1962. Do you see your present impact of the rectangle. I still wanted to retain the sense
aims and preoccupations as materially different from of field, as I had in Tournament and Reflections, and had
what they were then ? found more flexible means. In time, I realized that even
Stadler: There are big changes; there are strong connec- these means weren't sufficient to include the variety of
tions. The Bennington show had things in it I later ex- visual and emotional experiences I meant to project.
tended and developed. A single picture might have some-
thing in it I went on with and something I gave up. You mention feelings but talk principally in formal terms.
For instance, a key painting in that exhibition was How do the two come together in your imagination?
Reflections. There, the colour areas mimicked the generally Through the colour. They come to the viewer as a func-
rectangular shape of the canvas. Another key picture, tion of the colour.
Tournament, had a similar geometric treatment. I was soon
to give up this rigid sort of format. What those paintings The shape or format is incidental to the colour experience
had that was important to me, and that became a mark and is a vehicle for it?

of my work for the next few years, was the use of colour in That would be correct as far as my early paintings are
varying densities—from opaque to transparent—in a single concerned because I was trying to underplay or suppress
painting. Something that I continue to be involved in the element of drawing. More recently, my intention is to
that dates from the Bennington show—and that, inciden- use any and all elements, including shape, to make the
tally, is characteristic of those two paintings—is the use of pictorial experience.
multiple colours, not just two or three, but perhaps ten or
twelve. Of course, I don't always work with such a great In the paintings of a few years ago—the fan paintings, for
range of colours, but I often do. instance—you knew the format before you began, and
After the Bennington show, I found myself in a dilemma. presumably this imposed certain formal limits upon you
A rectilinear approach in the format of paintings results and affected your actual practice—how you put the colour
in rectangles. And there's the tendency, when one works on. The more recent paintings are freer, but how free?
this way, to paint the whole area. I was disturbed by the Do you begin with a firm concept? Are the paintings
regularity of this approach. I began to do paintings in composed, improvised, discovered?
fan-like formats, in many variations; I did semi-circular In reference to the fan paintings, it would help to under-
paintings—of course, these were done on a rectangle; stand that I did two series. One was rigid and systematic
they weren't shaped canvases. But for the most part, and the other loose and fluid; they were made by different