Page 22 - Studio International - July August 1974

Jules Olitski
Solomon Mirror 1974
Acrylic on canvas, 84 x 27 in.
Photo: Bruce C. Jones
Knoedler Contemporary Art, New York

accomplishment. canvas and using the rivulets of colour running
Pollock's art provided two sources for the diagonally — as if pulled — over the outside
original basis of Helen Frankenthaler's art; the lower corners. The Stripes, with colours placed
open, scattered placement of elements in a side to side in the centre of the work, return to
painted web, and the stain-like effect of his the under-colours of the Veils, only heightened
1951 black-and-white paintings. During the without the bronze or green wash on top and
1950s, Frankenthaler opened up Pollock's surrounded by a luminous white canvas field.
art to include colour, by reducing the number of The lack of directional change in the Stripes
web-like lines making them of differing colours, served to isolate their hypostatic colour change.
and inserting patches of solid hue into the All of Louis's series have a flat, unmottled
resulting grid-like structure. At the same time, surface, although it is present 'illusionistically'
her use of thin pigments stained directly into in the Veils (see above), as the result of his
unprimed fabric resulted in a continual surface staining the paint directly into the canvas. The
alignment which maintained the picture surface development of the stain technique allowed a
as two-dimensional, something which, rich colour surface which was non-painterly in
because of his thick-pigment touch, had the extreme; that is to say, the colour's surface
required Pollock to use a more numerous, was identical with the fabric weave and heavy
all-over dosage to accomplish. surface modelling — which seemed to weight
Although built from Frankenthaler's down colour — was avoided.
staining technique, Morris Louis's Veils posit The new direction, exemplified by Louis and
an entirely different conclusion. While the Frankenthaler, was called 'post-painterly' by
experience of stained surface engendered is Greenberg. It involved `(a) reaction . . . against
post-Pollock, the sense of colour and light, as the mannered drawing and the mannered
well as design, is somehow more traditional. design of painterly abstraction, but above all
Indeed, because they have a shallow against the last. By contrast with the
illusionistic reading (caused by the successive interweaving of light and dark gradations in the
bronze or green washes over the surface) and typical abstract expressionist picture . . . [there
fade from the frame on the upper three sides, is a] move towards a physical openness of
yet remain hieratic and frontal, they seem design, or towards linear clarity, or towards
related to the 1911-1912 cubist pictures of both.'6
Picasso and Braque. While they are clearly The use of colour shapes set against a
post-cubist and post-Pollock in structure, background characterizes much post-Pollock
they share with Pollock that rich complexity painting, including the earlier generation who
of meticulously interwoven areas of light and worked through the 196os — Still, Rothko,
dark found also in high analytical Cubism. Gottlieb and Hofmann , as well as the second
Even more than Pollock's paintings, Louis's generation of Frankenthaler, Dzubas and Jack
Veils in their surface hue and interim colour Bush.
share with Picasso and Braque a sense of In moving to emphasize colour, Rothko and
mysterious, interior lighting for the passages Gottlieb abandoned the cubist layout for their
contained, although Louis's works have no pictures, Rothko depending on the design
isolated and splayed elements. regularity of his rectangles of colour, Gottlieb
The complexity and richness of the Veils had on a balance of coloured shapes and across-the-
been achieved with linear means, but at the surface drawing. Both artists (along with
sacrifice of colour. Louis turned next to isolate Newman) left behind the heavy painterly touch
colour in his Unfurleds, but at the cost of as well. Rothko revised his colour in the 196os,
using a more open, sparser composition. from his earlier use of hue contrasts of similar
Modernist painting in the 196os evolved from values set side by side with works based
open linear compositions into linear increasingly on a single colour pushed forward
complexity, but it maintains the role of open through a value contrast against darker or
colour acquired so early. have a richer complexity of colour, but usually lighter companion colours. Gottlieb's
Louis's series of paintings from the early not its power. compositions, with drawing either pulled out
196os, the Unfurleds and the Stripes, along with The Unfurleds with brilliant passages of across the surface and accented by colour
Newman's paintings, established the level for colour separated by white recall the historical passages or with colour figurations pulled into
modernist painting in the decade, through the shift in directness found first in the fauve works vertical alignment, allowed his works the
linear treatment of their pictorial elements and of Matisse and André Derain. Louis `breathing room' that his early grid-restricted
the directly frontal presence of the picture. maintained his colour passages as something pictographs had foreclosed.
Louis employed a linear handling in order to close to drawing. Of the stain-painters in the Hofmann, unlike Rothko and Gottlieb,
further serve the role of colour in his art: early decade only Louis seemed to avoid maintained his painterly touch in his 196os
placing colour in a tightly drawn area serves making 'shapes' out of his colours. This was paintings, but he kept his cubist design as well.7
to isolate and increase the power of each separate accomplished in the Unfurleds by emptying out It was his genius to marry Cubism to fauve
colour section, where a painterly treatment may the centre to a brilliant, wide expanse of white colour: indeed it seems that in accepting the
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