Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
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CHAPTER 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
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New York.
Despite Francis's assoaat:Lon with Abstract Expressionism. or painterly art, the direction of his painting had
been tOWard that compositional openness and formal clarity of which Greenberg spoke. Shining Back (fig. 22.1),
1958, presents an open structure that is animated, but not
obscured, by Francis's continued use of brush gesture, the
drip, and the spatter. In later works, despite lingering vestiges of spatters, the essential organization is that_ of a tCw
free but controlled color-shapes:_red, yellow, and bluedefining the limits of a dominant white space. Francis's
paintings of the early seventies (fig. 22.2) increasingly
emphasized the edge to the point wher~his paint spatters
at times surround a clear or almost clear center area of canvas. At times he uses a precise linear structure as a control
for his free patterns of stains and spatters, and has created
an elegant and lyrical form of abstract art.
An artist also sometimes categorized as a Color Field
painter is Joan Mitchell (1926-92), one of the younger
artists associated with Abstract Expressionism during the
fifties, along with Francis and others. From the fifti~s
onward, Mitchell demonstrated a particular interest 111
evoking her relationship to landscape, initially referring ~ 0
both natural and urban environments, often in terms of a
Sam Francis, Untitled, No. 11, 1973. Acrylic on canvas, 8 X 10' (2.4 X 3 m). Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York.
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22.3 Joan Mitchell,
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
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Before, I had always painted on sized and primed canvasbut my paint was becoming thinner and more fluid and
cried out to be soaked, not resting. In Mountains and Sea,
I put in the charcoal line gestures first, because I wanted to
draw in with color and shape the totally abstract memory
of the landscape. I spilled on the dra-wing in paint from the
coffee cans. The charcoal lines were original guideposts
that eventually became unnecessary.
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CHAPTER 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
and brown. The effect of the blended colors is as deland luminescent as that of her paintings.
Morris Louis (1912-62) was one of the talented
Arneri<:an painters to emerge in the fifties. Living in
Wa.shingtorr, D.C., somewhat apart from the New York
and working almost in isolation, he and a group of
that included Kenneth Noland were central to the
of Color Field painting. The basic point
Louis's work and that of other Color Field painters,
in contrast to most of the other new approaches of the sixties, is that they continued a tradition of painting exemplified by Pollock, Newman, Still, Motherwell, and Reinhardt
(see clrapter 19). All of these artists were concerned with
the classic problems of pictorial space and the statement of
the picture plane. Louis characteristically applied extremely
runny paint to an unstretched canvas, allowing it to flow
over the inclined surface in effects sometimes suggestive of
translucent color veils. The importance of Frankenthaler's
example in Louis's development of this techuique has been
noted. However, even more so than Frankenthaler, Louis
eliminated the brush gesture, although the flat, thin pigment is at times modulated in billowing tonal waves (fig.
22.6). His "veil". paintings consist of bands of brilliant,
curving color-shapes submerged in translucent washes
through which they emerge principally at the edges.
Although subdued, the resulting color is immensely riclr.
In another formula, the artist used long, parallel strips of
pure color arranged side by side in rainbow effect.
Although the separate colors here are clearly distinguished,
the edges are sofr and slightly interpenetrating (fig. 22.7).
Jules Olitski (b. 1922) might be seen as a man of
romantic sensibility expressing himself through the sensu-
527
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Acrylic on canvas,
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High
Yellow,
7'8W
of American Art,
Poons
In tbe sixties, Larry Poons (b. 1937) created an intriguing
form of Systemic painting with optical-illusionistic impl!ca
22.9 Larry Poons, Nixe5
Mate, 1964. Acrylic on
canvas 5' 10" X 9'4"
[ 1.78 ~ 2.8 m). Formerly
collection Robert C. Scull,
New~rk.
ry
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Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D.C.
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
529
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22.13 Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1969. Crayon and oil on canvas, 6'6" X 8'7"
[2 X 2.6 m). The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
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CHAPTER 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
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14 Cy Twombly,
Hero and Leander,
Triptych (Rome),
]981-84. Oil and chalk
on canvas, panel one
22.15 Cy Twombly,
Untitled, 1978 (Roma).
Wood, cloth, wire, nails,
mat oil paint, l '5" X
Alloway, Hard-Edge was defined in opposition to geometric art, in the following way:-"The 'cone, cylinder, and
sphere' of cezanne fame have persisted in much 20thcentury painting. Even where these forms are not purely
repreSented, abstract artists have tended toward a compilation of separable elements. Form has been treated as discrete entities/' whereas "forms are few in hard-edge and
the surface .4nmilculate ... , The whole picture becomes the
unit; forms extend the length of the painting or are
restricted to two or three tones. The result of this sparseness is that the spatial effect of figures on a field is
avoided." The important distinCtion drawn hefe between
Hard-Edge and the older geometric tradition is the search
for a total unity in which there is generally no foreground
or background, no "figures on a fi~ld." During the fifties,
Ellsworth Kelly, Ad Reinhardt, Leon Polk Smith, Alexander
Liberman, Sidney Wolfson, and Agnes Martin (most of
them exhibiting at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York)
were the principal pioneers. Barnett Newman (also showing at Parsons) was a force in related but not identical space
and color explorations (see fig. 19.29).
Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923), who matnred artistically in
Paris following World War II, carne to be considered a
CHAPTER 22 ' SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
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leader of the Hard-Edge faction within Color Field painting, although he hirnself.expressed some discomfort with
this label. He explained to Henry Geldzahler in 1963,
"I'm interested in the mass and color, the black and
white-the edges happen because the. forms get as quiet as
they can be." Despite the abstract appearance of much of
Kelly's painting, the artist drew extensively on his observation of the natural forms around hini, as in Window)
Museum of Modern Art, Paris of 1949 (fig. 22.16). In
1954 the artist returned to the States, settling in New York
among a group of artists, inclutling Jasper Johns, Robert
Rauschenberg, Jack Youngerman, and Agnes Martin, who,
like him, resisted the dominance of Abstract Expressionism.
In New York, Kelly experimented with collage and continued to develop his interest in shape and color and the relationship of figure to ground. The influence of Arp was
evident ;t tin1es. His paintings of the early sixties frequently
juxtaposed fields of equally vibrant color, squeezing expansive shapes within the confines of a rectangular canvas (fig.
22.17). But just as tl1e tension in tl1ese canvases suggests,
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22.22 Kenneth Noland, Graded Exposure, 1967. Acrylic on canvas, 7'4%" X 19' I" [2.3 X 5.8 mi. Collection Mrs. Samuel G.
Rautbord, Chicago .
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of colored forms on the canvas, rather than on the Jess tangible, more self-consciously optical effect of stained color
preferred by artists such as Louis and Noland.
In the later sixties, Held rebelled against the mode.rni:.t
rejection of illusionism and resisted the pervasive reductive
trend in contemporary painting. He introduced compk~x 1
apparently three-dimensional shapes into his paintings. The
insistent exploration of a version of rigid geometric abstraction led Held through the refinement of his means to a
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CHAPTER 2 2
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
Vasarely
The Hungarian-French painter Victor Vasarely (1908-9?)
was the most influential figure in the realm of Op ::trt.
Although his earlier paintings belonged in the general tradition of Concrete art, in the forties Vasarely devoted hin .
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self to Optical art and theories of perception. Vasarclis art
tbeories, first presented in his 1955 Yellow Manifesto
involved the replacement of traditional easel painting b~:
what he called "kinetic pl~stics." To him, "painting and
sculpture become anachronistic terms: it is more exact to
speal< of a bi-, tri-, and multidimensional plastic art. We
no longer have distinct manifestations of a creative scn~
ibility, but the development of a single plastic sensibility in
64
64" (162.6
and Anuszkiewicz
537
canvas, 60
60" (l52A
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CHAPTER 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
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22.30 Alexander Calder, The Spiral, 1958. Standing mobile, sheet metal and metal rods, height 30' (9.1 mi. UNESCO, Paris.
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22.32 George Rickey, Four Lines Up, 1967. Stainless steel, height 16'
(4.9 m). Collection Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Levi, lutherville, Maryland .
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CHAPTER 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
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New York.
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22.37 Robert Irwin, Unfilled, 1965-67. Acr)ic aulomob'rle lacquers on prepared, shaped aluminum with metal tubes, four 150 wall
floodlights. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
542
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22.38 Robert Irwin, 9 Spaces, 9 Trees, july 7, 1983. Cast c~ncrete planters; Kolorgaard %" (1.59 cml aperture,
plastic-coated blue fencing; Visuvius plum trees; and Sedum Or8ganium ground cover. Public Safety Building
543
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of the object itself Greenberg's protCgC Michael Fried perceived the seriousness of the conflict, observing in 1967
that, "There is . . . a sharp contrast between the literalist
[i.e., Minimalist] espousal of objecthood-almost, it
seems, as an art in its own right-and modernist painting's
self-imposed imperative that it defeat or suspend its own
objectbood tbrougb the medium of shape," Minimalist
artists denied the modernist belief that works of art should
be autonomous-that they should exist in their own terms
irrespective of context-and instead considered the importance of a work's environment. They often took into
account theories of the psychology of perception and
emphasized the importance of the audience's interaction
with their pieces, arguing that art need not be absorbed
from a single viewpoint in a purely optical fashion.
Minimalist art considered not only the eyes of the spectator, but also the body.
Caro
In order to understand the relationship between modernism and Minimalism, it is helpfitl to consider the work
of a key sixties modernist, the young British sculptor
Anthony Caro (b. 1924). Caro was particularly influenced
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by the example of Henry Moore, for whom he worked ail
In similar fashion, Caro's works often seem to dematerialize in front of the eye, registering their surfaces rather than
any sense of bulle The bright planes of Midday (fig. 22,39)
appear almost to float. Similarly, elements of Riviera (tlg.
22.40) seem to hover effortlessly in the air.
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22.39 AnthonyCaro, Midday, 1960. Painted steel, 7'7%" X 2'll':i" X 12'1%" (2.3 X 0.91 X 3.7 m).
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
22.40 Anthony
Cora, Riviera,
1971-74. Rusted
steel, 10'7" X 27'
X 10' (3.2 X 8.2
X 3 m). Collection
metrical pattern of light lines forming regular, spaced rectangles moving inward from the canvas edge to the crucifoJiiU center. These lines were not formed by adding wbite
22.41 Fronk Stella, jaspers Dilemma, 1962-63. Alkyd on canvas, 6'5" X 12' 10" (2 X 3.9
mi.
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and, when Stell
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Black paintings were included in Sixteen Americac 11s,. ' 1C'
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wrote a statement about them at his request Aict1
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22.43 frank Stella, Exhibition, 1971. lawrence Rubin Gallery, New York.
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CHAPTER 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
22.44 Frank Stella, The Pequod Meets the jeroboam: Her Story, Moby Dick Deckle Edges, 1993. lithograph, etching, aquatint,
relief, and mezzotint, 70 X 65W [ 177.8 X 165.7 em). Printed and published by Tyler Graphics Ltd.
received significant critical attention. He offered a passionate defense of abstract art in 1983, when he gave a series
of six lectures at Harvard University as the Charles Eliot
Norton Professor of Poetry. However, his works of the
nineties challenge the distinction between abstraction and
representation, as Stella strived to pioduce reliefs that convey narrative significance in a nonfigurative fashion and yet
incorporate forms that are suggestive of more naturalistic
representation (fig. 22.44). Stella's works, while not
strictly antimodernist, have clearly challenged the narrow
CHAPTER 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
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CHAPTER 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
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22.48 Donald judd, Untitled (Progre5sion), Edition of seven, 1965. Red lacquer on galvanized iron,
5 X 69 X 8W (12.7 X 175.3 X 21.6 em). The Saint louis Art Museum, Missouri.
CHAPTER 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
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22.49 Donald judd, Untitled, 1977. Concrete, outer ring diameter 49'3" (15m), height 2'11"(0.89 m); inner ring
diameter 44'3" (13.5 m), height 2' 1 1"-6' 10" (0.89-2.1 m). Collection the Cily of Munster, Germany.
one's body has a fundamental link to one's perception and experience of sculpture. According to
Morris, "One knows immediately what is smaller
and what is larger than himself. It is obvious, yet
important, to take note of the fact that things
smaller than ourselves are seen differently than
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22.51 Robert Morris, Exhibition, Green Gallery, New York, 1964. left, to right: Untitled (Cloud), 1964, painted plywood;
Untitled (Boiler), 1964, painted plywood; Untitled (Floor Beam), 1964, painted plywood; Untitled (Table), 1964, painted plywood.-
551
approx. 30 x 60'
19.1 X 18.3 m).
Shown here as
installed temporarily
at the Addison
Gallery, Andover
Massachusetts, '
of Art.
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22.55 Carl Andre, 37 Pieces of Work, Fall 1969. Aluminum, copper, steel, lead, magnesium, and zinc, 1,296
units (216 of each metal), each unit 12 X 12 X %" [30.5 X 30.5 X 1.9 em), overall 36 X 36' [ 1 1 X 11 m).
Installation view in the rotunda of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1970. Now in the Crex
Collection, Hallen fUr ne_ue Kunst, Schaffhausen, Switzerland.
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
553
22.56 Richard
Serra,
Belts
1966-67.'
Vulcanized rubbe
blue neon, 18'1~"
X 6'2';i" X 1'5%'
[5.5 X 1.9 X
0.4 m). Solomon R
Guggenheim
Foundation, New
York.
into the work heightens the viewer's awareness of the intricacies of the forms the draped rubber has created. Ser~_a's
One Ton Prop (House of Cards) (fig. 22.57) balances ffi'ur
five-hundred-pound lead sheets against one another. The
Minimalist Painters
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22.58 Agnes Martin, Night Sea, 1963. Oil and gold leaf on
canvas, 6 X 6' (1.8 X 1.8 m). Private collection.
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CHAPTER 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
:2:2.63 Brice Marden, The Dylan Painting, 1966. Oil and wax an canvas, 5' X I 0'
[1.52 X 3 m). Collection Helen Portugal, New York.
paintings. His smdy of Chinese calligraphy and corresponding interest in Asian culture inform his Cold Mountain
paintings, named in honor of the ninth-century Chinese
poet whose name comes from his sacred dwelling spot (fig.
2:?.64). The layering and interplay of lines and pigment
coinment on the process of painting itself. The rhythmic,
allover disposition of the calligraphic marks produces a
sense of balance, harmony, and precision much in keeping
with his earlier painting. Here again, then, is the Minimalist
paradox of an extreme simplicity that is capable of rewarding sustained contemplation with revelations of unsuspected spiritual complexity or sheer aesthetic pleasure .
22.64 Brice Marden, Cold Mountain 5 (Open}, 1988-91. Oil on linen, 9 X 12'
[2] X 3.7 m). Collection Robert and Jane Meyerhoff, Phoenix, Maryland.
CHAPTER 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
557
Dravv:ing directly on the wall or attaching to it a flattened, geometric shape created merely by folding brown
wrapping paper (fig. 22.65), Dorothea Rockburne (b.
1921) might seem to have so reduced her means as to take
Minimalism over the line into Arte povera, an Italian movement characterized by its use of humble materials (see
chapter 24). However, the direction proved quite different,
fixed by the artist's preoccupation with the mathematics of
set theory as an intellectually pure strategy for creating an
intricate interplay of simple geometric forms and real space.
So dependent was this art on process itself that
Roclcburne created it directly on the gallery wall, thereby
condemning her pieces to a poignant life of fragility and
impermanence. She subsequently worked in more durable
materials and installations, as well as with richer clements,
such as color and texture (fig. 22.66). Nevertheless,
Roclcburne remained loyal to her fundamental principle of
folding "Yrn
w hie!1 h er sa~n
produces flat, pnsmattc shapes seduces the eye while enga
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the nnnd. It also reveals why the challenge of working within Minirnalism's purit~cally self-denying regimen appealed
to some of the most gifted artists to emerge in the sixties.
During the sixties, Jo Baer (b. 1929) eliminated the
brushwork and painterly texture of her earlier work to create pieces whose smooth surfaces showed little evidence of
the artist's hand. By reducing the visual interest of the surface itself, Baer believed that the spectator could focus on
the image as a whole. like Robert Morris, Baer incorporated the principles of Gestalt psychology into her work
using her images to test the limits of human perception:
and thus drawing attention to the object nature of the canvas itsel In 1969, .Baer began her Wraparound series. ,
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22.65 Dorothea Rockburne, Indication Drawing Series: Neighborhood from the wall series Drawing Which Makes Itself, 1973.
Wall drawing: pencil and colored pencil with vellum, 13'4" X 8'4" [4.1 X 2.5 m). The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
558
CHAPTER 22
SIXTIES ABSTRACTION
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22.66 Dorothea
Rockburne, The Glory
of Doubt, Pascal,
1988-89. Watercolor
o nd gold leaf on
prepared acetate and
watercolor on museum
6'1%" (1.14 X
1.9 m).
longer purely surface, but a three-dimensional entity, relying upon all of its surfaces to produce its particular effect.
The colored bands in Untitled (Wraparound Triptych-Blue) Green) Lavender) play an important role, for it is the
borders of an image that first signal the presence of a shape
to the human brain.
22.67
Jo Boer,
Untitled {Wraparound
Triptych-Blue, Green,
Lavender), 1969-74.
Oil on canvas, each
panel 48 X 52"
[122 X 132 em).
Collection the artist.
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22.69 Bernd and Hilla Becher, Water Towers, 1980. Blackand-white photographs, 61 Xi X 49Xi" (155.6 X 125.1 cml.
Courtesy Sonnabend Gallery, New York.
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known. The Bechers turned their attention to the industrial transformation of the Western world, taking stark,
closely cropped photographs of its hallmark architectural
structures. Their photographs are frequendy arranged into
series of visually similar buildings and hung together in the
format of a grid (fig. 22.69). Within these typological
studies, each photograph functions as an independent unit,
but the virtually tmiform lighting and the similarity in form
and vie-wpoint produce an effect of serial repetition that
could be compared to the sculptures of Judd or Andre.
Such interest in the individuality of units within similar
types has a history in German photographfthat extends to
the work of August Sander (see chapter 13). As teachers,
the Bcchers have influenced several generations of photographers in Germany and abroad.
560
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