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Lot Essay
'We tend to discount a lot of meaning that goes on in life that's non-verbal. Color can convey a total range of mood and expression, of one's experience in life, without having to give it descriptive or literary qualities'
Kenneth Noland’s exceptional use of color has earned him the reputation of one of the foremost American Color Field Painters. The Diamond paintings of the mid-1960s are among his most iconic series, of which Untitled is a supreme example. The canvas is divided into four exacting bands and moves from the neon yellow and bright orange of the upper register to the aubergine and dark cyan of the lower half. The colors neatly end and begin in line with one another, neither merging nor separated by distinct borders, and yet the gradation towards the bottommost point of the diamond creates a collective sense of movement. Donald Judd articulates this sophisticated sense of movement in his seminal 1965 essay, “Specific Objects”: “Almost all paintings are spatial in one way or another…As flat and unillusionistic as Noland’s paintings are, the bands do advance and recede” (D. Judd, “Specific Objects”, Arts Yearbook 8, 1965). The even divide of space and the complimentary coloring of the bands appears perfectly balanced, exuding a calming, meditative energy.
In the mid-1960s, Noland began appraising the canvas as an active tool in the artistic process. Along with Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis, he developed a stain painting technique that allowed the paint to seep into the unprimed canvas. The raw base created a shocking vibrancy once the paint was applied, and the qualities of acrylic, which suspends the pigment in an oil medium, prevents the color from ever deteriorating over time. Untitled thus appears as fresh as the day it was painted in 1965, and the depth of pigment embedded into the canvas gives a superlative sense of chromatic sophistication. The tonality achieved through contrast heightens each individual color and lends strength in the overall composition. As the artist explains, “Value differences in painting always cut in…Color differences always go side by side. Laterally. Color differences can illustrate three dimensional form, but using color in terms of hue belongs more properly to painting than modeling with dark and light [as in sculpting] does” (K. Noland quoted in K. Wilkin, Kenneth Noland, New York, 1990, p. 22).
Equally striking is Noland’s decision to tilt the canvas forty-five degrees, his inventiveness with orientation challenges the traditional practice of the canvas as a passive receptacle for the image. By rotating the canvas on its axis, the composition becomes energized, and directly shapes the impact of the paintings. The striking disorientation of a rotated canvas causes the viewer to anchor themselves visually by the four corners, bringing the perpendicular relationship between the bands and the edge of the canvas into focus, shifting the perspective of where color begins and ends in its allotted space. Color is at once fixed and displaced by the novel shape of the canvas, a vision masterfully executed by the artist.
Kenneth Noland’s exceptional use of color has earned him the reputation of one of the foremost American Color Field Painters. The Diamond paintings of the mid-1960s are among his most iconic series, of which Untitled is a supreme example. The canvas is divided into four exacting bands and moves from the neon yellow and bright orange of the upper register to the aubergine and dark cyan of the lower half. The colors neatly end and begin in line with one another, neither merging nor separated by distinct borders, and yet the gradation towards the bottommost point of the diamond creates a collective sense of movement. Donald Judd articulates this sophisticated sense of movement in his seminal 1965 essay, “Specific Objects”: “Almost all paintings are spatial in one way or another…As flat and unillusionistic as Noland’s paintings are, the bands do advance and recede” (D. Judd, “Specific Objects”, Arts Yearbook 8, 1965). The even divide of space and the complimentary coloring of the bands appears perfectly balanced, exuding a calming, meditative energy.
In the mid-1960s, Noland began appraising the canvas as an active tool in the artistic process. Along with Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis, he developed a stain painting technique that allowed the paint to seep into the unprimed canvas. The raw base created a shocking vibrancy once the paint was applied, and the qualities of acrylic, which suspends the pigment in an oil medium, prevents the color from ever deteriorating over time. Untitled thus appears as fresh as the day it was painted in 1965, and the depth of pigment embedded into the canvas gives a superlative sense of chromatic sophistication. The tonality achieved through contrast heightens each individual color and lends strength in the overall composition. As the artist explains, “Value differences in painting always cut in…Color differences always go side by side. Laterally. Color differences can illustrate three dimensional form, but using color in terms of hue belongs more properly to painting than modeling with dark and light [as in sculpting] does” (K. Noland quoted in K. Wilkin, Kenneth Noland, New York, 1990, p. 22).
Equally striking is Noland’s decision to tilt the canvas forty-five degrees, his inventiveness with orientation challenges the traditional practice of the canvas as a passive receptacle for the image. By rotating the canvas on its axis, the composition becomes energized, and directly shapes the impact of the paintings. The striking disorientation of a rotated canvas causes the viewer to anchor themselves visually by the four corners, bringing the perpendicular relationship between the bands and the edge of the canvas into focus, shifting the perspective of where color begins and ends in its allotted space. Color is at once fixed and displaced by the novel shape of the canvas, a vision masterfully executed by the artist.