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Lot Essay
Addition VII represents a defining period of Morris Louis' work and is part of a series he began in 1959 in which he opened up the composition of his iconic Veil paintings to release the full impact of the chromatic intensity that has become his signature motif. The majestic columns of color that rise up across the surface of the canvas are an extension of the technique that Louis first explored in 1954, in which the artist spilled paint directly onto the canvas, leaving the pigment thin enough so that the eye is able to see beneath the surface, as Clement Greenberg, the champion of Abstract Expressionism proclaimed in 1960, "Louis spills his paint on unsized and unprimed cotton duck canvas, leaving the pigment almost everywhere thin enoughfor the eye to sense the threadedness and wovenness of the fabric underneath. But 'underneath' is the wrong word. The fabric being soaked in paint rather than merely covered by it, becomes paint in itself, color in itself, like dyed cloth; the threadedness and wovennness are in the color" (C. Greenberg as quoted in M. Fried, Morris Louis, New York, 1970, p. 23).
Rejecting the gestural painting style of the Abstract Expressionists (the artist lived and worked in Washington D.C., far from the excesses of New York), Louis is considered a profoundly intellectual painter, focused exclusively on color and texture. In Addition VII, Louis nearly covers the entire canvas with pigment, abandoning the earlier form of a mass of pigment floating amidst a white background. The green, blue, brown and ochre swaths of color achieve an effect of radiant inner light that seems to emerge from the surface of the canvas while permeating throughout. The various layers of thinned pigment are soaked into the canvas so that the only actual texture is the canvas threads. Color and support become inseparable just as the order in which the layers are poured is unclear. In the present work Louis is able to achieve the appearance of a complex, modulated surface while maintaining a completely flattened picture plane. While Louis's technique of pouring paint down the canvas was very different than the expressionist brush-work of his New York counterparts, his artistic process is just as deeply felt and saturated with meaning.
Louis's innovative and expressive use of pure color and refinement of his predecessor's staining techniques earned him the praise of influential museum curators including the Museum of Modern Art's William Rubin and other works from this celebrated series are located in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Addition), Whitney Museum of American Art (Addition II), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark (Addition III), Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne (Addition VI), and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Addition VIII) plus the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Although his supporters lauded Louis' formal rigor and abstract vocabulary, his oeuvre is unabashedly concerned with visual pleasure. "(The paintings) are hedonistic in spirit, decorously cultivating the delectability of color. They did insinuate self, nature and other art in their choice of color but their essential content was immediate and open, buoyant color" (I. Sandler, quoted by D. Upright, Morris Louis: The Complete Paintings, A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1985, p. 20).
Rejecting the gestural painting style of the Abstract Expressionists (the artist lived and worked in Washington D.C., far from the excesses of New York), Louis is considered a profoundly intellectual painter, focused exclusively on color and texture. In Addition VII, Louis nearly covers the entire canvas with pigment, abandoning the earlier form of a mass of pigment floating amidst a white background. The green, blue, brown and ochre swaths of color achieve an effect of radiant inner light that seems to emerge from the surface of the canvas while permeating throughout. The various layers of thinned pigment are soaked into the canvas so that the only actual texture is the canvas threads. Color and support become inseparable just as the order in which the layers are poured is unclear. In the present work Louis is able to achieve the appearance of a complex, modulated surface while maintaining a completely flattened picture plane. While Louis's technique of pouring paint down the canvas was very different than the expressionist brush-work of his New York counterparts, his artistic process is just as deeply felt and saturated with meaning.
Louis's innovative and expressive use of pure color and refinement of his predecessor's staining techniques earned him the praise of influential museum curators including the Museum of Modern Art's William Rubin and other works from this celebrated series are located in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Addition), Whitney Museum of American Art (Addition II), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark (Addition III), Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne (Addition VI), and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Addition VIII) plus the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Although his supporters lauded Louis' formal rigor and abstract vocabulary, his oeuvre is unabashedly concerned with visual pleasure. "(The paintings) are hedonistic in spirit, decorously cultivating the delectability of color. They did insinuate self, nature and other art in their choice of color but their essential content was immediate and open, buoyant color" (I. Sandler, quoted by D. Upright, Morris Louis: The Complete Paintings, A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1985, p. 20).