Page 59 - Studio International - April 1969

negative outline which encourages us to see
the forms, however dense and heavy, as
locked into the picture plane rather than laid
on it. This occurs most noticeably in the Un-
furled series, where rivulets of colour running
in parallels diagonally off each end of the
wide canvas are often held in balance spati-
ally by the neutral contours which surround
them.
In some of the other, larger Veils, such as Beth-
beth of 1958, the canvas was obviously folded
across trestles or battens9 so that the paint
could be made to flow down in separate
valleys, giving the canvas a measured rhythm
across its surface without impeding the flow
and interweave of colour. This development
led to a series in which colours run out from
either side of a central vertical channel of un-
painted canvas, marking the axis along which
the canvas was supported like a tent on a
ridge-pole. Greenberg has written that, 'the
first mark on a surface destroys its virtual
flatness'.10 I think we can now see that
even the unmarked rectangular surface of an
empty canvas is already optically illusory. I
suspect that Louis found it desirable to work
on canvases which were not only unstretched
but literally unflat partly because it allowed
colour alone to destroy flatness.
In the Veil paintings the area of unpainted
canvas is usually whitened with a thin gesso
which gives it the same dry, slightly gritty
quality as the painted surfaces on which the
acrylics have left a fine granular deposit. In
about the dimensions of his paintings and the of purple were poured down the canvas, the later striped paintings the unpainted can-
exact location of the image in relation to the spaced evenly across its surface; second: four vas is usually left bare, principally, I'm sure,
edges of the stretcher.8 His paintings were swathes of green were run over them, over- because Louis was using finer and more
never stretched in such a way that the image lapping and combining; third: five swathes of saturated colours in a more consistently liquid
could appear absolutely symmetrical in rela- very thin black were poured over these, dul- state and was thus able to maintain a surface
tion to the format or could entirely fill it. For ling and unifying the tones beneath, except almost undifferentiated by texture. 11 In these
instance, in the few horizontally-striped paint- along the very top of the canvas where the paintings of 1961-2, colour appears to lie right
ings I have seen where the stripes run over apices of the parabolas overlap; fourth: a in rather than on the weave of the canvas. It
both top and bottom, the cluster of stripes is penetrating wash of pale green was laid over seems almost impossible that so little pigment
located slightly to one side of centre as if to the top half of the image, binding with the should leave so much colour.
maintain the independence of the image from other tones and running down into the black. Morris Louis struck to the heart of a matter
the format. Because the green, which is mixed with white, which has been crucial to the recent develop-
Particularly in the later Veil paintings of appears so much more transparent than the ment of painting. The canvas is an inde-
1958-9, and even in the most broadly painted dark tones beneath, it seems as if the latter pendent physical surface. In order to make it
of the Unfurleds, a very substantial contribu- must have been applied last, in which case the their own, painters have previously either
tion to the effect of the painting is made by black would have had to run upwards into felt it necessary to maintain upon this surface
shape felt as image. Because Louis's painting the green. Colour appears as if free to flow up an illusion and series of references which
process was the very antithesis of delineation, or down the canvas. The image itself, the relate outside it, or have had to cover the
and because the rhythmic nature of this pro- result of pouring paint down the canvas, surface with a pattern of marks or forms
cess is so easily discerned in the paint, a seems to be anchored at the base and to sweep strong enough in identity to be imposed upon
supreme tension is maintained between means up from it like a wave breaking upward us as a first priority. In his last works Louis
and end. In Kuf, one of the Veils in which the against the foot of a cliff. This kind of equi- changes the visual identity of the canvas by
colour is gathered into a single and compact vocation—the absolute suspension of the logic steeping it in colour, but leaves it virtually
image, the process can be reconstructed with of process in favour of sensations received by intact as a surface. In one superb painting of
some hope of accuracy. The unprimed and the eye—would be impossible in oil paint or spring 1962 a bright lemon yellow at the right-
unstretched canvas must have been suspended even in watercolour. By really using to the hand edge of a pillar of colours is identical in
at the top, held out at an angle and fixed full the properties of acrylic paints and of the tone with the unpainted canvas. The edge
at the bottom to allow a slight sag; any paint different media with which they can be used vibrates like a plucked string, yet it does not
which was not absorbed by the canvas would to give different degrees of saturation and cut the surface as a line cuts it.
gather in the trough so formed, from which it adhesion, Louis produced apparently im- How, one wonders, could a man conceive out
could be soaked up with a sponge. The paint- possible conjunctions. Often, at the boun- of his own experience something so purely
ing appears to have been made in several daries of his images, the medium seeping out visual, and having conceived it how realize it
separate episodes. First: three broad swathes into the unprimed canvas provides a kind of without loss of intensity. This is the real chal-