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Lot Essay
Robert Mangold's minimalist paintings exist between object and image whereby the reductive abstraction is offset by the concreteness of the canvas. By the 1970s, Mangold's works attained the patina of Mangold's signature way of painting and its relation to the wall. The shaped canvases contain subtle monochromatic surfaces that are punctuated by linear lines drawn to evoke geometric shapes. The complexity of Mangold's layered imagery alludes to the flatness of the canvas as well as the contrarian lines that carve out space between second and third dimensions.
"A typical work by Mangold reads as flat, yet is also a field that contains figuration; simple enough to be viewed as a totality, its shapes are nevertheless eccentric and strangely asymmetrical. Each work defeats expectations of regularity based on the existing conventions of abstract... each of his paintings acquired a compelling uniqueness, as if its closest relatives were actually not so close. Each work induces a viewer to look ever more carefully. It is art to which you never become habituated". (R. Shiff, "A Compelling Uniqueness," Robert Mangold: Paintings, 1990-2002, exh. cat., Aspen Art Museum, 2003, p. 25.)
"A typical work by Mangold reads as flat, yet is also a field that contains figuration; simple enough to be viewed as a totality, its shapes are nevertheless eccentric and strangely asymmetrical. Each work defeats expectations of regularity based on the existing conventions of abstract... each of his paintings acquired a compelling uniqueness, as if its closest relatives were actually not so close. Each work induces a viewer to look ever more carefully. It is art to which you never become habituated". (R. Shiff, "A Compelling Uniqueness," Robert Mangold: Paintings, 1990-2002, exh. cat., Aspen Art Museum, 2003, p. 25.)