Page 35 - Studio International - July August 1974

Wild Indigo 1967 Easterly 1969
Acrylic on canvas, 89 x 207 in.
Acrylic on canvas, 55 102 in.
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York

painting by giving it a kind of drop, a flow
and slide towards the bottom that compensates
for the upward displacement of the central
axis and enlivens even the heaviest elements
in the picture. Counterposed is a contrary
movement set off by the colour changes from
band to band: within each pairing, a shift to
more emphatic colour (to lower value or
higher chroma) seems to run with irregular
speed up the picture, and this affords a kind of
rhythmic backwash to the main current along
the picture's vertical axis.
It should be noted that Noland has rather
frequently structured his paintings by such
sequences of bands moving in different
directions. In some of the 1964 'square
diamonds', eg the appropriately entitled
Return, the chevrons point to the left whereas
both their colour sequence and emphasis in
placement (owing to an element-perimeter
rhyme of the last figure on the right) set up a
contrary movement. This resolution of
different directions is particularly effective
because they occur as conflicting tendencies
within one and the same configuration of
elements. More obviously, in a number
of stripe pictures such as the outstanding
Oakum (197o, the Australian National
Gallery in Canberra), different groups
of stripes move in opposite directions
towards one another into a central
field.
In addition to these Cézannesque
considerations of composition — a progression of
inter-related planes, the counterpoise of
different directions, and a balance of Some chevron paintings also have resulting conflict of directions seems to resolve
unbalancing forces — there is, I believe, contrasting spatial qualities that owe to most satisfactorily when Noland opens up a
another consideration warranting re-examination different ways of using paint. Purple in the certain amount of space by means of value
in Noland's work, and that is the contrast of Shade of Red (1963, in the Detroit Institute of contrast.
spatial qualities within a given painting. Arts) offers a fine example. The bottom of the A particularly rich mix of spatial qualities
Inconsistency in spatial quality has, of three chevrons in this picture is painted more is to be found in the 'square diamond'
course, been a prime feature of modernist thinly than the other two. The resultant painting, Day 1964. Day" has five differently
painting8, and Noland is no exception to this softening of this bottom chevron allows it to coloured chevrons which at the literal edge read
pattern. For instance, while the earlier dematerialize while at the same time as on the surface and tied as it were to the
`circles' or 'targets' — that is, those with identifying with the support, so that in this perimeter. Towards the centre of the painting,
splashes of paint forming an aureole about a case the quality of diminished presentness9 however, the chevrons tend to project, so that
series of concentric rings — are sometimes admirably offsets its extension beyond the the deepest space piles up in front of the canvas.
analyzed in terms of contrasting fast and slow literal shape. But it is an elusive space, with qualities that
parts, these pictures can also vary subtly in the The role of illusion in Noland's elongated vary as the eye moves around the picture.
degree of definition of spatial qualities. diamond pictures of 1967 has been analyzed Various pairs of chevrons have a subtle tendency
In many examples, for instance the very in some detail by Michael Fried. He quite to tent or furrow, so that the chevrons may
fine Whirl of 1960, the paint of the outer correctly observed that in these pictures change position in space as the eye moves
aureole has been much thinned down As a depicted and literal shapes are in conflict since across the canvas. Furthermore, some of the
result, the more highly saturated adjacent ring illusion and direction (stemming from the chevrons, projecting less than others, read
reads as both more forward and more present; sequence of the colour bands) both work as if they might be only part of larger areas,
its predominance reduces the aureole to a against the confines of the literal shape. It portions of which have been covered by those
shadow or halo. Hence the inner rings can should be added, however, that while these chevrons in front of them. These uncertain
relate to the unpainted field, whereas colour bands align perfectly with the literal sensations of shifting spaces occur, however,
occasionally a circle without such an aureole sides, they run against the long axis from in a very ordered context, since continuity of
will fail to activate the outer portions of the (literal) corner to corner which is, in Noland's surface is assured by the staining technique,
canvas as it should do. view10, the backbone of the pictures. The and integrity of design follows from the

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