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Lot Essay
The 1990s were significant for Mangold as a time of conceptual consolidation. Emerging in the 1960s as an advocate of the undiscovered possibilities of painting, Mangold advanced the Abstract Expressionist desire to transcend the limitations of the canvas. It was not until the early 1990s, however, that the concept of 'Painting as Wall' began to make a recurring appearance in his studio notes. "I saw my painting neither as Painting as Window/Illusion nor Painting as Object," he wrote. "This flat, altered shape, picture plane, existing before you like a wall, that you could neither enter nor treat as an object, was painting's essence Painting you relate to like architecture in a scale related to human size" (R. Mangold, quoted in N. Princenthal, "A Survey of the Paintings," in R. Shiff et al (eds.), Robert Mangold, London 2000, p. 262). Referring to his Curved Plane/Figure series as 'homeless murals,' Mangold imbued the present work with an expanded spatial presence: rather than simply adorning the wall, it imposes itself as an alternative structural support.
Mangold's architectural conception of his work is heightened by the elliptical patterns he developed during this period. Whilst graphic inscription had long played a role in Mangold's practice, it was in the preceding Plane/Figure series of 1992-1994 that the artist comprehensively explored the formula of multi-paneled canvases working in counterpoint with drawn circular patterns. In the present work, the almost diagrammatic relationship between the tripartite plane of the canvas and the conflicting elliptical figures enhances the work's architectonic aesthetic. This becomes particularly apparent when we consider Mangold's method: as David Carrier explains, 'Mangold draws, and after painting, redraws his lines, which thus are embedded in his color, as if sinopia, like those preserved under the pigment of a Renaissance fresco, had returned to the surface to haunt these paintings" (D. Carrier, "Visual Dialogue and the Acknowledgment of Particularity. Robert Mangold's Curved Plane/Figure Series," in Robert Mangold, exh. cat., Pace Wildenstein, New York, 1995, p. 8).
Mangold's architectural conception of his work is heightened by the elliptical patterns he developed during this period. Whilst graphic inscription had long played a role in Mangold's practice, it was in the preceding Plane/Figure series of 1992-1994 that the artist comprehensively explored the formula of multi-paneled canvases working in counterpoint with drawn circular patterns. In the present work, the almost diagrammatic relationship between the tripartite plane of the canvas and the conflicting elliptical figures enhances the work's architectonic aesthetic. This becomes particularly apparent when we consider Mangold's method: as David Carrier explains, 'Mangold draws, and after painting, redraws his lines, which thus are embedded in his color, as if sinopia, like those preserved under the pigment of a Renaissance fresco, had returned to the surface to haunt these paintings" (D. Carrier, "Visual Dialogue and the Acknowledgment of Particularity. Robert Mangold's Curved Plane/Figure Series," in Robert Mangold, exh. cat., Pace Wildenstein, New York, 1995, p. 8).