Page 47 - Studio International - June 1968

shapes and maybe they're horses and maybe they're not horses, splattering to spraying—when there was not a single thing I was doing
maybe they're trees and maybe they're just colours. And then you in my painting, procedurally speaking, technically speaking, that I'd
realize that you can create a landscape, I mean this specific land- been doing six months before. I'd never used a spray in my paint-
scape, without painting trees or anything. The mind needs very little ings before, I'd never done paintings without lines before, and I
to pin a figurative reading on. And then you go through the flat wasn't using a brush for anything except mixing the paint. The whole
thing, the surface of the canvas and all that bit, and it goes on and on process had changed completely and it's pretty damn nearly changed
and on and you realize finally that there's practically nothing that twice over since then.
you need to establish associations and to make the thing take on a Leaving on one-side the technical problems, the biggest problem for
spatial reading outside of itself. I've found finally one line is enough me over the past couple of years is that once you do eliminate the
to establish a spatial reading that goes against colour. Then why is drawing, how the colour is going to behave is totally unpredictable
one interested ? I don't know why I am interested in colour, I think because you don't really have the experience. I've never done
I've been fighting this preoccupation with colour. I really never paintings of this sort before; I've never seen colour act this way
wanted to get involved with it. But the logic of the situation is what before. The point is that if you're handling colour in an old idiom,
is so pressing, the moment when you recognize that colour always has like putting it down within an outline, isolating the colour against a
been one of the most expressive parts of what you've been doing. neutral ground, or even if you go further than that and put the
Yet I'd always reach the point in a painting where it was a question colour edge to edge, well, you know there's an additive thing, you
of saying: Well, should I make it red or should I make it yellow? have red and yellow and this colour is always red and that colour is
And there seemed no particular reason why it should be red or yel- always yellow. And I find with what I'm doing now you put down
low. And I wanted to arrive at a state where the colour was as two colours, and what you see at the end doesn't really have very
unequivocal, as positive, as unarbitrary, as the drawing. The moment much to do with either of them, it's something totally different that
you're that interested and you start your exploration it becomes occurs.
increasingly obvious that until you have stripped everything else off, It's obvious to me now that it's possible to use colours in such a way
you're never going to know what colour is going to do or what it's that what happens in the eye is not the same as what happens in the
capable of. I'm getting now to a stage where I'm thinking all the pot. And consequently, not having come across this effect before, for
time about pictures which don't exist yet, and with the last few I've the last year, eighteen months, I've been operating in an area where
been involved in a hideous battle with technical problems to try and everything has been quite unpredictable. Like you think: I'll do this
make the paintings like I want them to be. and such will happen; and something totally different happens. But
It's never happened in all the time I've been painting that the actual I think I'm getting it figured out slowly.
business of making the canvas has provided such problems. About a I suppose the most important difference is the difference between
year ago, there was one period—about the time I changed from paintings which are concerned with colour and paintings which simply
use it. Up to now we've simply been using colour to decorate (and I
don't mean that in a derogatory sense, because it does include Matis-
se). We've known for a long time that if you put down one area of
colour next to another area, something peculiar happens at the edge,
but nobody's ever done very much about it, except do it at the edge.
And I think in a way what I'm doing is taking that edge and putting it
all over the canvas, and it really does become very peculiar then.
The essential thing about the dots for me is that they go all over
the surface of the canvas in a completely undifferentiated way.
A couple of years ago I would have said that on the one hand you
have painters who use colour in an essentially decorative sense, and
on the other hand you have people whose paintings are about colour,
like Morris Louis and Ken Noland. Now it seems to me that Noland
is in exactly the same position as Matisse; he's establishing areas and
filling them in with colour. If you put colours edge to edge or sepa-
rate them completely, that's it. Until that breaks down, I don't know
what else can be done. I'd like to get to the state where the painting
disappears and just leaves colour. q

This text is an edited version of a recorded conversation. Harold Cohen's recent
work is on exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, from June
18—July 14.

Facing page, left, Harold Cohen in his studio—on the walls
are examples of his recent work. Photo: Robyn Kemster
Facing page, top right, Shadow, shadow on the wall 1964
acrylic resin on canvas, 98 x 116 in.
Facing page, bottom right, Painting 1965
acrylic on canvas, 84 x 84 in.

Left, Untitled 1968, acrylic on terylene, 78 x 59 in.
Photo: Robyn Kemster