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Lot Essay
‘The results are shapes that have a firm hold on the wall and clear vertical orientation (the bottom edge of the canvas is always parallel to the floor), but seem otherwise quite “unhinged” – almost literally, as if drawn from shadows cast by doors wrenched loose from their jambs’
–Nancy Princenthal
A towering monolith of quadrilateral geometries, soaring to a height of over two metres, Robert Mangold’s Irregular Red- Orange Area with A Drawn Ellipse #3 is a magnificent example of the American minimalist’s ‘irregular areas’, a body of work produced between 1985 and 1987. Four asymmetric, assorted angles mould an unexpected and unfamiliar form. An acute angle at the bottom lefthand corner ascends to another at the apex. Falling from this peak, our eye meets an obtuse angle on the right side, thrusting the shape of the canvas outwards, before sharply plunging it down to marry with an angle of approximately 100° at the base. The work becomes a vessel for an egg-shaped ellipse, which seems to dictate and stabilise most of the shape’s geometries. It is perfectly contained within its shell of sides and corners against a patchwork of sketchy, warm brushstrokes, applied by Mangold using rollers, which are repeated in a disorder that resonates with the work’s overall irregularity. Mangold’s angles are both reductive and expansive, whilst the straight, horizontal axis of the southern edge – a consistent attribute of all Mangold’s ‘irregular areas’ – anchors the composition. The overall effect, according to critic Nancy Princenthal, is of ‘shapes that have a firm hold on the wall and clear vertical orientation … but seem otherwise quite “unhinged” – almost literally, as if drawn from shadows cast by doors wrenched loose from their jambs’ (N. Princenthal, ‘A Survey of the Paintings’, in Robert Mangold, London, 2000, p. 239). With its unusual and surprising shape and contents, Mangold’s Irregular red orange area with drawn ellipse encapsulates a riveting and truly unique geometric language in painting.
–Nancy Princenthal
A towering monolith of quadrilateral geometries, soaring to a height of over two metres, Robert Mangold’s Irregular Red- Orange Area with A Drawn Ellipse #3 is a magnificent example of the American minimalist’s ‘irregular areas’, a body of work produced between 1985 and 1987. Four asymmetric, assorted angles mould an unexpected and unfamiliar form. An acute angle at the bottom lefthand corner ascends to another at the apex. Falling from this peak, our eye meets an obtuse angle on the right side, thrusting the shape of the canvas outwards, before sharply plunging it down to marry with an angle of approximately 100° at the base. The work becomes a vessel for an egg-shaped ellipse, which seems to dictate and stabilise most of the shape’s geometries. It is perfectly contained within its shell of sides and corners against a patchwork of sketchy, warm brushstrokes, applied by Mangold using rollers, which are repeated in a disorder that resonates with the work’s overall irregularity. Mangold’s angles are both reductive and expansive, whilst the straight, horizontal axis of the southern edge – a consistent attribute of all Mangold’s ‘irregular areas’ – anchors the composition. The overall effect, according to critic Nancy Princenthal, is of ‘shapes that have a firm hold on the wall and clear vertical orientation … but seem otherwise quite “unhinged” – almost literally, as if drawn from shadows cast by doors wrenched loose from their jambs’ (N. Princenthal, ‘A Survey of the Paintings’, in Robert Mangold, London, 2000, p. 239). With its unusual and surprising shape and contents, Mangold’s Irregular red orange area with drawn ellipse encapsulates a riveting and truly unique geometric language in painting.