Page 23 - Studio International - July August 1974

necessity of a reciprocal alignment of element elements are flat and linear in character, the deduced more from colour's needs than from
edge to framing edge throughout the picture, optical effect they produce is painterly in the structural design. As such they are in a curious
Hofmann was able to bear down on colour sense of the flicker engendered by the criss-cross reversal from the works of Frank Stella, where
possibilities, either in bold combinations or in of differing poured lines of Pollock's works. shapes are made to carry the burden of
thin washes of a single colour highlighted Unlike Pollock's, however, they are produced conviction and interiors and exteriors read as
against a white surrounding border with small, by, and thus accept, wide expanses of open sympathetic.
solid colour areas. His most densely-packed colour and avoid any form of linear connecting Stella's early works share the 196os emphasis
works needed the touch of a painterly surface to network of structure. on a flat surface and a linearity of parts, but in
pull them off; this was, nevertheless, held in Jules Olitski's early 196os paintings employ a radical revision of shape. The similarity of the
balance by the taut linear profile given to each colour shapes stained into the unprimed depicted elements and exterior physical shape
colour plane. canvas, usually separated, as are Louis's of Stella's works are an extreme of pictorial
In the early 196os, Helen Frankenthaler Unfurled passages, by a white interstice which logic, yet they stave off the possibility of being
moved to open up her art, by replacing the isolates the colour by reinforcing its linear read as sculptured objects by their tense
grid-like web of the 195os paintings with an outline. Olitski's decision to pursue colour relationship to the traditional easel painting's
even scattering of colour shapes across the more emphatically came in a move away from rectangular form. As William Rubin observes of
surface. These works developed into a series of part-to-part colours to the use of one area of the early Copper series :
near-square canvases, which set one strong dominant colour, spread over most of the `The shaping of the copper pictures seemed to
colour within a 'framing' field of a contrasting surface, with secondary 'spots' or colour as some observers at the time to carry Stella's
colour. Roughly symmetrical in layout, these defining elements. 10 At this point (1965), new works out of the realm of painting into a
works brought colour forward at an faced with the logic of one-colour paintings, he form of sculptural relief. There is no doubt, of
approximately equal rate, a change from the began a reconsideration of the painterly course, that these pictures did contain the
interwoven effects of her earlier works. tradition and of what Pollock and Louis had seeds of certain possibilities subsequently
Both Dzubas and Bush employed clearly done with it. His decision to spray marked the explored by other artists in the form of
defined shapes of colour 'stacked' or side by initial step in a new direction toward complexity. freestanding minimal and serial sculpture.
side and stained directly into the canvas. A wide range of colour has been the basis But for Stella, one purpose of the copper
Dzubas's works are distinguished by a looser for Kenneth Noland's art from the early 196os. pictures was precisely to test the limits of the
handling of the profiling edges of his shapes Noland's painted targets and chevrons are conventions of painting in regard to the shape
(Bush does this occasionally as well) and by an composed of colour stained into the canvas in of the field, and to do this in such a way that the
avoidance of any taut interlocking simple geometric shapes that depend, as does resulting images would "hold" the wall as
complications of colour areas (although his the Louis Unfurled series, upon the tension of painting.'12
mid-6os works sometimes do this). Bush's works painted structure against the physical shape Stella's Vector series introduced colour in the
rely most on colour experienced as a piece-to- of the canvas itself. Unlike Louis's works, form of separate shapes that were bound
piece composition or use a colour passage as however, Noland's pictures depend upon together by the equivalence in size, and a
drawing across a large surface to open under a direct pressure between centered or near- design balance of their field of force directions.
colour's tonalities and placements. centered elements and the physical shape of the Modernist art in the early 196os was
Barnett Newmann continued in the 196os the support, either echoing or reinforcing as in characterized, as we have seen, by an emphasis
use of flat colour fields with an unmodelled Go or running against as in 17th Stage. His on colour as such and on a corresponding use
surface, broken only by linear elements which composition has indirect roots in Pollock's of linear handling of the pictorial elements to
run vertically from edge to edge and thus avoid example in the sense that painted elements and achieve colour's full dimension. As a self-
a part-to-part relationship. They present, as pictorial structure of the works are identical critical undertaking, modernism is bound to
Greenberg notes, `colour-space,'8 and, as and obvious. examine, discard, broaden or narrow,
Fried points out, it is a space which, avoiding Noland's structure is, however, secondary to re-examine and reintroduce its components.
figuration, can only be described as 'sheerly the brilliant effects of colour against the white Modernism in essence must change
optical.'9 During the 196os Newman moved ground. This emphasis has remained constant through a renewal of itself. As John
to tighten the function of the vertical passages in his art, as Kenworth Moffett notes : Elderfield notes : 'To search out what any
in his pictures, changing the role from that of `... Noland is not interested in the shaped canvas single position takes for granted, to isolate it,
marking out the proportions of the surface's as such, ie, as shape, as drawing. A diamond and set about to make it a matter of achievement,
colour to that of holding in balance pressures is a simple, symmetrical geometric form which not assumption, is central to the whole history
put upon the surface's flatness. This was accommodates diagonal colour bands. . . . of modernist painting.'13
accomplished by pulling out the picture Noland has never stressed shape by using By the second half of the 196os styles began
horizontally with the weight on lines at the irregular formats, leaving his pictures unframed, to change. A shift was undertaken from the
end, by placing the pictorial tension on the lines or deepening the stretcher bars. Shape, as all holistic effect of the earlier years to increased
by increasing radically the vertical proportions, other elements in his art, serves colour.'11 complexity. With the advantage of seeing
or by using the natural inward pressure of While Noland's works employ painted areas beyond 197o, we know that modernist painting,
triangular forms. against or with the physical shape, Darby in many cases, turned to a heavily modelled,
Newman was parelleled in this 'colour-space' Bannard's early works use solid colour in a painterly surface. But this was an outgrowth
painting by Larry Poons, whose early paintings depiction of a geometric shape inside the work. of a 196os style that remained primarily linear
use small dots or ellipses of colour against a While the shapes are not arbitrary, Bannard's and flat, although driving itself closer and
solid surface of contrasting colour. Poons's colour contrasts have the effect of suggesting closer to the painterly tradition. As suggested
works are also among the first to come to grips that they are derived from the colour, not earlier, it was in part a move to include the
with Pollock's all-over style: although the containing it, the geometric form being richness of Pollock's and Louis's and
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