Page 23 - Studio International - March April 1975

/972-1973, to ft x 24i ft x 5 ft.
Ed Meneeley

Irving Sandier
The painting of Ed Meneeley has However, Meneeley's conception of a bands. In this, he took his cues from
changed enormously over the last two picture was different from that of the Newman, but whereas the older artist
decades. Yet at every moment, he has older-master. Newman's asymmetrically limited his 'touches' primarily to the
sacrificed as little as he could of what placed vertical stripes or 'zips', as he edges of his 'zips', Meneeley allowed them
came before. He began his career in the called them, function as beats which a broader area in which to act.
195os as an Abstract Expressionist. animate the colour-field and not as However, on close scrutiny,
Around 1962, he felt cramped by the forms within the field. In contrast, Meneeley's irregular, contrasting
limitations of his gestural style, Meneeley's symmetrical design of colours within the vertical enclosures
involving as it did a continual zeroing in vertical bands calls attention to the turn out not to be painterly or gestural
on a zone of compulsion. To open up, he division of the surface into at all. In fact, these areas are arrived at
wanted a less habitual approach to compartments of colour as much as to through the bleeding of stained colours,
painting, and he began to invent the picture as a holistic field. Moreover, untouched, and can be thought of as a
machines that, using the action of gravity, Meneeley had a greater regard than did conceptual carry-over from the
poured pigment on canvas to produce Newman for the weights of contrasting accidental pictures of 1962. Ironically,
accidental effects upon which he then colours, thus intensifying the there is more of the artist's hand in the
imposed his artistic will. awareness of separable forms. unmodulated or `unpainterly' solid
This use of impersonal mechanical In his colour abstractions of the colours. Such reversals are surprising,
devices led Meneeley in the following 196os, Meneeley did not completely stimulating interest, and ironic,
year to turn to an even less gestural abandon the 'look' of his earlier gestural thwarting expectations, and Meneeley
style. Moreover, like many of his painting which prompted romantic, appears intent on provoking both
contemporaries, he came to feel the need sensuous and ambiguous associations. surprise and irony. As another example,
for a clearer, more openly colouristic, But responding to an urge for clarity, a the primary elements in his painting is
abstract image, and he looked to classicizing impulse, he confined his the single, saturated colour. One expects
Barnett Newman for inspiration. amorphous painting within the vertical it to be sumptuous, but instead it is
generally somewhat 'off', dissonant
enough to be disquieting.
Much as the play of rigorous,
classicizing design against seemingly
gestural activity has engaged Meneeley,
what seems to have interested him more
is the potential of weighty colour. This
led him in 1963 to conceive of the two-
dimensional painted surface as a free-
standing sculpture. Since then, he has
made a series of zigzag or screen-like
pieces, composed of flat panels painted on
both sides, attached to each other at right
angles. Sculptors have been painting their
pieces for some time, generally using
colour as one component of their work.
Meneeley had treated colour in this way
in some of his earlier constructions. But in
his more original screens, he maintains
colour as part of two-dimensional
painting and projects the completed
picture in three-dimensional space.
Wall 1964. 8 ft X 20 ft x 4 ft. Aside from the expressiveness and the►
93