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Lot Essay
A masterful study of color and its compositional potential, Stanley Whitney’s IDA Red Dressed in Green is a largescale example of the artist’s famed color field aesthetic. Often inspired by the rhythms of Whitney’s curated musical playlists, works from this grid series – of which Whitney has become renowned – hum with a tempo that can be felt in the synergies that lie between each color block. The present example owes its name Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys’ 1938 classic, ‘Ida Red’, an upbeat folk tune that tells the cheeky tale of the singer’s adoration for Ida Red. As the day goes on and the night grow dark, Wills thinks of Ida Red and how she has made a “plumb fool” out of him. The lyrics of this tune, which speak of dimming fires and gentle Sunday nights, have been captured beautifully in Whitney’s picture. The signature hues of red cement the canvas, flanked on either side by midnight hues and starry yellows that evoke the feeling of a cozy night spent by the blazing firelight. Whitney muses on the playful nature of the song, introducing a vibrant palette of greens that Ida Red is ‘dressed in’. The effect is a jubilant palette, one that resonates with life and the steps of a line dance.
Whitney’s composition is as diverse texturally as it is in palette. Passages of opaque brushwork dance alongside looser passages, where Whitney has opted from a more translucent pigment that grabs at the hairs of his brushes and leaves an impression of their texture. Here, Whitney submits himself to his medium, allowing for the various viscosities of pigment to determine the extent to which the artist’s hand is made visible. Whitney’s paintings evoke “a landscape of mark-making; one section brushed vigorously, another flat, undisturbed, and opaque. The variation of touch and the wobbly line that delineates these gravity-bound slabs of color breathes life into the paintings” (M. Bourbon, Critics Picks: Stanley Whitney, Artforum, n.d., https://www.artforum.com/picks/modern-art-museum-fort-worth-66469). On this grid composition, Whitney reflects that color determines every aspect of his pictures. He starts by first painting one square passage, then allowing each subsequent color to realize itself on the canvas, as if the colors are dancing hook-in-arm on the canvas in an attempt to find the perfect relationship. The size of the square passages, the extent to which pigments overlap, the cleanness of Whitney’s lines are all determined solely by color.
Given Whitney’s innovative process, there is a natural rhythm to his works, each cadence of color imbuing the canvas with the effect of an active conversation; each color responds to the next and bounces off of one another in a playful game of call-and-response. Though joining the likes of Mondrian and Albers in experimenting with the grid, Whitney’s decision to lead with color produces a far more liberated canvas. IDA Red Dressed in Green is not driven by form, rather by feeling, as Whitney paints only what he senses from the colors and what they communicate to him is best fit. In this way, Whitney may be seen as the ultimate storyteller, removing his direct interventions from the canvas and allowing the colors to narrate themselves through his hand.
Stanley Whitney arrived to the art scene in the 1970s, a cultural moment landmarked by political distress and new waves of thought. From his early career, Whitney found himself painting compositions that didn’t match the norms of Black art at the time, as Black artists were traditionally celebrated only if they contemplated race on their canvas; Whitney, however, was far more concerned with unearthing a universal language through color. Drawing on Minimalism, Color Field painting, Ancient Roman architecture, experimental jazz, and the paintings of Titian, Diego Velazquez, Paul Cezanne, Piet Mondrian, Giorgio Morandi and American quilt-making as references, Whitney distills numerous histories of art and music into his innovative work. IDA Red Dressed in Green is a poetic homage to color, an intimate collaboration of pigment and line that sings the tale of a loving relationship between red and green. Here, color is the poet and Whitney the scribe.
Whitney’s composition is as diverse texturally as it is in palette. Passages of opaque brushwork dance alongside looser passages, where Whitney has opted from a more translucent pigment that grabs at the hairs of his brushes and leaves an impression of their texture. Here, Whitney submits himself to his medium, allowing for the various viscosities of pigment to determine the extent to which the artist’s hand is made visible. Whitney’s paintings evoke “a landscape of mark-making; one section brushed vigorously, another flat, undisturbed, and opaque. The variation of touch and the wobbly line that delineates these gravity-bound slabs of color breathes life into the paintings” (M. Bourbon, Critics Picks: Stanley Whitney, Artforum, n.d., https://www.artforum.com/picks/modern-art-museum-fort-worth-66469). On this grid composition, Whitney reflects that color determines every aspect of his pictures. He starts by first painting one square passage, then allowing each subsequent color to realize itself on the canvas, as if the colors are dancing hook-in-arm on the canvas in an attempt to find the perfect relationship. The size of the square passages, the extent to which pigments overlap, the cleanness of Whitney’s lines are all determined solely by color.
Given Whitney’s innovative process, there is a natural rhythm to his works, each cadence of color imbuing the canvas with the effect of an active conversation; each color responds to the next and bounces off of one another in a playful game of call-and-response. Though joining the likes of Mondrian and Albers in experimenting with the grid, Whitney’s decision to lead with color produces a far more liberated canvas. IDA Red Dressed in Green is not driven by form, rather by feeling, as Whitney paints only what he senses from the colors and what they communicate to him is best fit. In this way, Whitney may be seen as the ultimate storyteller, removing his direct interventions from the canvas and allowing the colors to narrate themselves through his hand.
Stanley Whitney arrived to the art scene in the 1970s, a cultural moment landmarked by political distress and new waves of thought. From his early career, Whitney found himself painting compositions that didn’t match the norms of Black art at the time, as Black artists were traditionally celebrated only if they contemplated race on their canvas; Whitney, however, was far more concerned with unearthing a universal language through color. Drawing on Minimalism, Color Field painting, Ancient Roman architecture, experimental jazz, and the paintings of Titian, Diego Velazquez, Paul Cezanne, Piet Mondrian, Giorgio Morandi and American quilt-making as references, Whitney distills numerous histories of art and music into his innovative work. IDA Red Dressed in Green is a poetic homage to color, an intimate collaboration of pigment and line that sings the tale of a loving relationship between red and green. Here, color is the poet and Whitney the scribe.