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Lot Essay
Robert Mangold is a seminal figure in the history of Minimalist art. The present painting, Attic Series XVII, from 1991, delivers a profoundly contemplative effect. Here, Mangold takes familiar shapes and transforms them into dazzling mystery. Mangold’s painted canvases exist as objects in space. His goal with Attic Series XVII, and his wider series of Attic Paintings, is to force the viewer to confront the painting directly as a material object. In what he calls painting-as-object, his work becomes a mental and physical block that causes you to look at the painting and not into it.
Attic Series XVII at first reads as a flat field of color with an asymmetrical shape and eccentric figural element. Mangold activates this larger-than-life canvas by varying the direction of a paint roller across its surface, thus allowing light to catch upon the painting’s oscillating surface. The interplay of hues, color and light across the composition give the work an atmospheric quality and a substantial physicality. The composition includes a contorted quadrilateral rendering that draws the space into ambiguity. Like a sand timer turned on its side, this would-be figure in Attic Series VXII is confined and frozen within space. The beauty of Mangold’s precise, minutely-varying aesthetic is controlled by a set of rules he outlines for himself in his Attic Series. The rules are as follows: “A vertical format - if it is wider than tall, a physical break must be made at that juncture; the bottom edge is parallel to the floor; the irregular quadrilateral may be rectilinear or have one curved side; if there is a curved side, the interior figure must be rectilinear; if all four sides are rectilinear, the interior figure must be curved; the interior figure must touch all four sides of the exterior shape.” (K. Kertess, Robert Mangold: The Attic Series, New York, 1992, p. 10). Pre-determined by the artist’s working method, the hard-edged geometric interior shape in Attic Series XVII touches all four sides and is framed by three straight edges and one rounded edge. The curved side produces the illusion that the composition is slightly askew, yet the work is perpendicular to the floor. However basic or limited these rules seem, they provide the artist with an endless supply of inspiration and choice. The result is that Attic Series XVII defeats our assumed expectations of regularity in Mangold’s oeuvre.
Mangold’s Attic Series comprises forty-four paintings and a number of drawing and print studies. The strong presence of drawing in this series, visible in the interior shape of Attic Series XVII, calls to mind the preliminary drawings completed by Renaissance painters who reduced their compositions to straightforward linear shapes. Further, the deep earth tones found in paintings from this series, specifically the deep red in Attic Series XVII, are an acknowledgement of Mangold’s admiration for Attic-period Greek vases, which he first saw on trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Mangold’s drawn forms are analogous to the lines found incised into Greek pottery, which come in various shapes and sizes, just like Mangold’s canvases.
Robert Mangold has drawn influence from artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, whose paintings feature geometric shapes and blocks of color. As Moholy-Nagy continually represents the motif of the cross in varying colors and levels of translucency, Mangold experiments with crossed ellipses or geometric arrangements within fields of opaque color in his Attic Series. Further, Mangold’s encounter with Mark Rothko’s Orange and Yellow (1956), while an art student, radically challenged the way he experienced painting. Rothko’s rectangular canvases filled with color and light were more like objects than works that abided by the traditional notion of the painting-as-window. This technique, where a painted surface is an ‘open window’ whereby depth is produced by rendering realistic relationships between objects and environments, was no longer an option for Mangold, who sought to produce work that occupied the space between object and window. Mangold’s work is also akin to that of his contemporary Sol LeWitt, who utilizes a set of strict guidelines to create his Minimalist wall drawings. Rules are typical of Minimalist artists’ working methods; Mangold’s set of directions for himself that are similar to the directions that Sol LeWitt creates for others.
Robert Mangold’s work is spellbinding for the subtle ways in which it has transformed the way we see shapes and patterns in the world. His work is forthright in spatial form, and extravagant in aesthetic profundity. Mixing an artistic candor with complex concerns of composition, Robert Mangold’s Attic Series XVII engages the viewer both physically and mentally through its succinct elegance and torqued grace. “The twisted ellipse found in some of these paintings looks much like the sign for infinity; but its potential for infiniteness is contained and defined by its finiteness. Simplicity becomes complexity. The paintings’ planes become grounds for contemplation” (K. Kertess, ibid., p. 11).
Attic Series XVII at first reads as a flat field of color with an asymmetrical shape and eccentric figural element. Mangold activates this larger-than-life canvas by varying the direction of a paint roller across its surface, thus allowing light to catch upon the painting’s oscillating surface. The interplay of hues, color and light across the composition give the work an atmospheric quality and a substantial physicality. The composition includes a contorted quadrilateral rendering that draws the space into ambiguity. Like a sand timer turned on its side, this would-be figure in Attic Series VXII is confined and frozen within space. The beauty of Mangold’s precise, minutely-varying aesthetic is controlled by a set of rules he outlines for himself in his Attic Series. The rules are as follows: “A vertical format - if it is wider than tall, a physical break must be made at that juncture; the bottom edge is parallel to the floor; the irregular quadrilateral may be rectilinear or have one curved side; if there is a curved side, the interior figure must be rectilinear; if all four sides are rectilinear, the interior figure must be curved; the interior figure must touch all four sides of the exterior shape.” (K. Kertess, Robert Mangold: The Attic Series, New York, 1992, p. 10). Pre-determined by the artist’s working method, the hard-edged geometric interior shape in Attic Series XVII touches all four sides and is framed by three straight edges and one rounded edge. The curved side produces the illusion that the composition is slightly askew, yet the work is perpendicular to the floor. However basic or limited these rules seem, they provide the artist with an endless supply of inspiration and choice. The result is that Attic Series XVII defeats our assumed expectations of regularity in Mangold’s oeuvre.
Mangold’s Attic Series comprises forty-four paintings and a number of drawing and print studies. The strong presence of drawing in this series, visible in the interior shape of Attic Series XVII, calls to mind the preliminary drawings completed by Renaissance painters who reduced their compositions to straightforward linear shapes. Further, the deep earth tones found in paintings from this series, specifically the deep red in Attic Series XVII, are an acknowledgement of Mangold’s admiration for Attic-period Greek vases, which he first saw on trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Mangold’s drawn forms are analogous to the lines found incised into Greek pottery, which come in various shapes and sizes, just like Mangold’s canvases.
Robert Mangold has drawn influence from artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, whose paintings feature geometric shapes and blocks of color. As Moholy-Nagy continually represents the motif of the cross in varying colors and levels of translucency, Mangold experiments with crossed ellipses or geometric arrangements within fields of opaque color in his Attic Series. Further, Mangold’s encounter with Mark Rothko’s Orange and Yellow (1956), while an art student, radically challenged the way he experienced painting. Rothko’s rectangular canvases filled with color and light were more like objects than works that abided by the traditional notion of the painting-as-window. This technique, where a painted surface is an ‘open window’ whereby depth is produced by rendering realistic relationships between objects and environments, was no longer an option for Mangold, who sought to produce work that occupied the space between object and window. Mangold’s work is also akin to that of his contemporary Sol LeWitt, who utilizes a set of strict guidelines to create his Minimalist wall drawings. Rules are typical of Minimalist artists’ working methods; Mangold’s set of directions for himself that are similar to the directions that Sol LeWitt creates for others.
Robert Mangold’s work is spellbinding for the subtle ways in which it has transformed the way we see shapes and patterns in the world. His work is forthright in spatial form, and extravagant in aesthetic profundity. Mixing an artistic candor with complex concerns of composition, Robert Mangold’s Attic Series XVII engages the viewer both physically and mentally through its succinct elegance and torqued grace. “The twisted ellipse found in some of these paintings looks much like the sign for infinity; but its potential for infiniteness is contained and defined by its finiteness. Simplicity becomes complexity. The paintings’ planes become grounds for contemplation” (K. Kertess, ibid., p. 11).