Page 30 - Studio International - February 1974

Horizontal Stripe Painting, November 1957— pictorial flatness'.
January 1958 And then I went on to say :
Oil on canvas, 110 x 60 in.
Exhibited at Tate Gallery, London, 197o `Colour is the utterly indispensable means for
realizing the various species of pictorial space
. . . But the existence of pictorial space implies
the partial obliteration of the canvas's surface
from our consciousness. This is the role of
colour: to push back or bring forward the
required section of the design. The advance or
recession of different colours in juxtaposition is
a physical property of colour: it is a physical
impossibility to paint shapes on a surface, using
different colours . . . and avoid the illusion of
the recession of parts of that surface'.
The passages I have just read from my 'Space
in Colour' catalogue of 1953 still sum up what I
believe to be basic to the grammar of painting,
of whatever style or period. As far as I'm
concerned they still describe the fundamental
nature, the physical effect upon us, of painting
in general, of painting as such. My next
quotations come from further statements which
I have made from time to time about my own
preoccupations. By October 1958, when I had
already moved away from the experience of my
colour stripe paintings (both vertical and
horizontal - I made the first of them in March
1957, which was nearly five years before those
of Morris Louis), I wrote that :
`My main interest, in my painting, has always
been in colour, space and light . . . and space
in colour is the subject of my painting today to
the exclusion of everything else. But the space
must never be too deep, or the colour too flat.
Each painting has to adjust depth to surface in a
new and unique manner'.1
Four years now went by before I again
committed myself in words, this time in a small
one-page statement called 'A Note on my
Painting: 1962', part of which appeared in the
catalogue of an exhibition I had in Zurich, and
also in Art International. Part went as follows :
`For a very long time now, I have realized
that my overriding interest is colour. Colour is
both the subject and the means; the form and
the content; the image and the meaning, in my
painting today .. . It is obvious that colour is now
the only direction in which painting can travel.
Painting has still a continent left to explore, in
the direction of colour (and in no other
direction) . . . It seems obvious to me that we
are still only at the beginning of our discovery
and enjoyment of the superbly exciting facts of
the world of colour. One reels at the colour
possibilities now; the varied and contrasting
intensities, opacities, transparencies; the
seeming density and weight, warmth, coolness,
vibrancy; or the superbly inert 'dull' colours -
such as the marvellously uneventful expanses
of the surface of an old green door in the
—sunlight. Or the terrific-zing of a violet
vibration . . . a violent violet flower, with five
petals, suspended against the receptive furry
green of leaves in a greenhouse !'
That was ten years ago and the critics took
exception to my assertion that 'It is obvious that
colour is now the only direction in which
68