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Lot Essay
"Louis spills his paint on unsized and unprimed cotton duck canvas, leaving the pigment almost everywhere thin enough for 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 woveness are in the color" -Clement Greenberg (C. Greenberg, quoted in M. Fried, Morris Louis, New York, 1970, p. 23).
As Clement Greenberg elucidates, Louis's Sea Gamut transforms both the medium and support into a single pictorial object. This work is a striking example of the artist's iconic Stripes series, and is a dramatic symphony of chromatic shifts with hues ranging from brilliant yellow, blue, red, orange, to green. As the title suggests, the colors recall the spectrum of light bouncing off the surface of the sea, distilled into visually precise and referential hues. The thinned acrylic paint creates a stain on the canvas making the raw canvas and the inky pigment combine into a flat picture plane, a hallmark of Greenberg's idea of Post-Painting abstract version of Modernism.
Louis perfected his linear stain technique culminating in a series of Stripe paintings, which positions parallel bands of color against an unfettered field to explore both the vibrant rhythm and intensity of color. In Sea Gamut, Louis produces successive bands of color that are colorfully rich and thinly poured. There are two separate columns of stripes; the right section of color is four stripes bigger than the left creating a gap filled only by the unprimed canvas. However, the lacuna of canvas becomes a stripe of color itself creating a visually coherent pillar. Louis's emphasis of the unpainted canvas as an active compositional element, rather than pure physical support, is apparent. The overall positioning of the color is asymmetrical with the stripes shifting noticeably to the left of the composition making the viewer shift toward the color. Despite the asymmetrical placement of the stripes, the entire composition is balanced, and the result is two streams of colors that produce a harmonious and pleasurable optical experience.
Through a visit to Helen Frankenthaler's studio Louis was first exposed to her stained paintings, whose influence on his working methods and conception of painting was profoundly significant. This visit, as well as Louis's friendship with Kenneth Noland, spawned an exploration of different techniques of paint application, a style that would later be called Color Field Painting. Jackson Pollock and the Abstract Expressionist movement further influenced Louis's development. Yet, Louis moved away from the unrestrained gesture to create pieces of deliberate fluid painting. Working in a variety of series, that included the colorful, precise and refined Stripe paintings (1961-62), Louis produced effects of amazing delicacy and subtlety.
As Clement Greenberg elucidates, Louis's Sea Gamut transforms both the medium and support into a single pictorial object. This work is a striking example of the artist's iconic Stripes series, and is a dramatic symphony of chromatic shifts with hues ranging from brilliant yellow, blue, red, orange, to green. As the title suggests, the colors recall the spectrum of light bouncing off the surface of the sea, distilled into visually precise and referential hues. The thinned acrylic paint creates a stain on the canvas making the raw canvas and the inky pigment combine into a flat picture plane, a hallmark of Greenberg's idea of Post-Painting abstract version of Modernism.
Louis perfected his linear stain technique culminating in a series of Stripe paintings, which positions parallel bands of color against an unfettered field to explore both the vibrant rhythm and intensity of color. In Sea Gamut, Louis produces successive bands of color that are colorfully rich and thinly poured. There are two separate columns of stripes; the right section of color is four stripes bigger than the left creating a gap filled only by the unprimed canvas. However, the lacuna of canvas becomes a stripe of color itself creating a visually coherent pillar. Louis's emphasis of the unpainted canvas as an active compositional element, rather than pure physical support, is apparent. The overall positioning of the color is asymmetrical with the stripes shifting noticeably to the left of the composition making the viewer shift toward the color. Despite the asymmetrical placement of the stripes, the entire composition is balanced, and the result is two streams of colors that produce a harmonious and pleasurable optical experience.
Through a visit to Helen Frankenthaler's studio Louis was first exposed to her stained paintings, whose influence on his working methods and conception of painting was profoundly significant. This visit, as well as Louis's friendship with Kenneth Noland, spawned an exploration of different techniques of paint application, a style that would later be called Color Field Painting. Jackson Pollock and the Abstract Expressionist movement further influenced Louis's development. Yet, Louis moved away from the unrestrained gesture to create pieces of deliberate fluid painting. Working in a variety of series, that included the colorful, precise and refined Stripe paintings (1961-62), Louis produced effects of amazing delicacy and subtlety.