Page 25 - Studio International - July August 1974

purely optical one. The Open series opened up a paintings based on the contrast between involved in comprehending the colour
wide range of colour for Motherwell which had geometrical demarcations and softly painted interactions. Noland's last series of pictures from
earlier been inhibited by shape balancing areas marked the initial step in this direction. the 196os break the taut compression of the
(in paintings), and it has revealed him as a By 1969, Bannard was employing flat areas of dense horizontal bands by opening out the
major colour artist. scattered colours over a barely discernible centre to atmospheric passages. In an
Other artists have, in their works, paralleled geometric under-pattern. In these works, acknowledgment of Olitski's achievements,
Olitski's and Motherwell's movement into the Bannard's particular use of colour is most Noland tracks his colour bands along the upper
painterly, while retaining — as Olitski did before apparent: his pastel colours are equal in their and lower edges, the centre softly painted with
1969 — their earlier interests in a flat, readings of value and intensity, with the result mottled tones and slight shifts of colour. Unlike
unmodelled surface. In a series of major works that the hues all lie on the same visual level — Olitski, whose Cezanne-like drawing is
from 1969 Dzubas moved his shapes of colour thus balancing out an extremely complex surface aggressively directed at the surface, Noland's
to the edges of his works, set off against a colour patterning. At the same time Bannard's visual pictorial centre is more illusionistic and less
field. His works differ from Olitski's in their clueing of the 'edge' of a colour zone is painterly : it is a linear work not unlike Louis's
employment of these shapes as colour entities `optical', like the location of Pollock's line Veils in surface richness, but its surface colour is
in themselves (Olitski's serve as drawing with is in the classic 1948-51 paintings. the product of a decade's strength and persistence.
the field). Nevertheless, the use of a colour field More than any other modernist artists in the E. A. CARMEAN JR.
(usually softly brushed — with slight atmospheric 196os, Stella and Noland based their art on
qualities) has allowed Dzubas to free his colour geometric configurations, Noland as a vehicle 1 Clement Greenberg has done more to articulate this
shapes (and their complex interactions) from for his colour, Stella as a moderator for his critical point of view than any other author. A full
their previous structural role, which had shaped extensions of pictorial structure. By study of modernist art is impossible without
beginning with Greenberg's writings.
curiously contained the impact of their colour. 1966, however, Stella had opened his art to 2 Clement Greenberg, 'Modernist Painting' in
Dzubas's colour is best served when it is include colour in the Irregular Polygon series. The New Art (ed.: Gregory Battock) (New York:
openly distributed or located so as to While some works in this series had involved the E. P. Dutton and Co., 1966) pp. 101, 102, 103, 107.
3 Kenworth Moffett has raised this point in
influence by atmospheric changes, not by juxtaposition of colour and geometric shapes, conversations with the author, and in his discussions
structured force. This is true of Poons's later and modulating bands, other pictures depended of Noland and Olitski cited below. Additionally,
art as well, where the colour of his early pictures more heavily on an intersection of depicted conversation and written correspondence with the
following greatly assisted the author in this text:
had been underpinned by the holistic regularity shapes and connecting bands. The Protractor Walter Darby Bannard, Anthony Caro, Friedel
of the dots' and ellipses' placement and their series opened a wide range of complex Dzubas, Helen Frankenthaler, Michael Fried,
taut linear character. As his art loosened, the interactions among the parts, and suggests the Clement Greenberg, Rosalind Krauss, Robert
Motherwell, Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski.
ellipses of colour were first placed in a visual richness of Pollock's all-over paintings, While all exact quotations are cited in notation, many
scattered pattern over the surface, shifting his only with colour as the ingredient, not the specific ways of perception and procedure were
colour effects from tension to nuance. But painterly tracery. The slight illusionism gained from the above.
The most complete discussion of Pollock's classic
Poons's art remains, overall, best served by caused by the intersecting bands of the poured paintings is in William S. Rubin's 'Jackson
complexity, and in the next series he multiplied Protractor series was kept in check by the Pollock and the Modern Tradition', Artforum 5
the number of elements to again introduce a constant pressure of the picture's literal shape. (February-May, 1967).
5 Michael Fried, Three American Painters (exhibition
measure of counterpoint. A pictorial unity is This tension was relieved in the Saskatchewan catalogue) (Cambridge: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard
achieved in these works through the similarity series which grew out of the Protractor works. University, 1965) p. 14 (hereafter Fried, Three
of touch throughout the more complex all-over These works are unique in Stella's career, American Painters).
6 Clement Greenberg, Post-Painterly Abstraction
patterning; these steps take Poons's art — still using a rectangular canvas support and (exhibition catalogue) (Los Angeles: Los Angeles
composed here with linear elements — to the depicting shapes that are removed from any 1964).
County Museum of Art,
brink of a painterly style. sense of obvious edge deduction, and depend, 7 For a discussion of the role of the painterly touch
and colour, briefly regarding Hofmann, Rothko,
Frankenthaler's paintings in the late 196os instead, upon figure-ground relationships. Newman and Stella, see John Elderfield's
emphasized a collage-like placement of stained In removing the exterior force of the outside `Painterliness Redefined: Jules Olitski and Recent
Abstract Art, Part I', Art International 10
shapes against a white background. As these edges on the elements (a parallel to Poons's (December 1972): 22-25 (hereafter Elderfield).
evolved, they were increasingly pulled in the shift from the elliptical works) they allow again 8 Clement Greenberg, 'After Abstract Expressionism',
direction of drawing until, in Blue Rail 1969, a more atmospheric, looser feeling to the colour Art International 6 (October 1962): 29.
9 Fried, Three American Painters, p. 21.
the passage of stained areas functioned in a passages. 10 For a full discussion of Olitski's colour, see
linear character. Her style returned to Kenneth Noland moved to broaden his work Kenworth Moffet's Jules Olitski (exhibition catalogue)
complexity with the use of thin colour washes in the mid-1960s to include even more colour. (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1972).
behind this drawing which, although having an The Horizontal Stripe series, begun in 1967, 11 Kenworth Moffett, 'Noland', Art International 17
effect reminiscent of J. M. W. Turner's allowed him to increase the complexity of (Summer 1973): 31 (hereafter Moffett, Noland').
12 William S. Rubin, Frank Stella (exhibition
(1775-1851) modelling and glazing, remain colour interaction without an overly complex Catalogue) (New York, Museum of Modern Art,
non-painterly in application. Like Dzubas and compositional concern. Just as one reads 197o) p. 68. Stella's comments made in conversation
with Rubin.
Poons, Frankenthaler's later works are a Stella's painted forms as weightless, Noland's 13 Elderfield, p. 22.
mixture of earlier linear design and new horizontal bands directly avoid the traditional 14 Clement Greenberg, 'Jules Olitski' in XXXIII
pressures for complexity through atmospheric reading of presented figuration in the paintings. International Biennial Exhibition of Art: Venice 1966:
United States of America (exhibition catalogue)
effects. And, like these other two, the elements They represent, as Kenworth Moffett has (Washington, D.C.: National Collection of Fine Arts,
of her works remain non-painterly, although observed, a step closer — now in colour — to the 1966) p. 58.
their effects are not. complexity of Pollock.16 15 Elderfield, p. 25. See also: Moffett, Olitski, and
Rosalind Krauss, 'On Frontality', Artforum 6 (May
Darby Bannard's art underwent major The Horizontal Stripe paintings also parallel 1968): 40-46.
changes at the end of the 1960s. A series of the Protractors in the degree of complexity 16 See Moffett, 'Noland'.
13