hh arnason - sixties abstraction (ch. 22)

8/17/2019 HH Arnason - Sixties Abstraction (Ch. 22)

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· s bstraction

s postwar Western Europe and the United Statesincreasingly relaxed from the economic stress and

turbulence of the thirties and forties, the rare syn-

of mystical aspiration and physical gesture realized by: AIJstJ:act Expressionist generation be gan to break apart,

its constituent elements to follow their ownif not altogether tmrelated, paths. Some of these,

Pop art and New Realism (see chapter 21), led tooo JuacJa attempts to make art ever more inclusive of the

ordinary reality. Abstract Expressionist action painthighlighted the physical engagement of the artist in

art and the role of chance, two elements thatcentral to Performance art, which took the further

of involving participants and spectators n th creativeA different side of the Abstract Expressionist

emerged in systematic campaigns of excluding fromall but its most essential properties. By the end of the

some avant-garde artists and critics would contendart could be distilled into idea alone.

Something of the dual response to fifties a r t - t o its ere elitist sense of themselves as existential heroes and

of their works as sacred objects-has already been seen in

the career of Yves Klein, who, on the one hand, organized an exhibition that consisted of nothingness le videand, on the od1er hand, made sculpture in the Ducharnpianassisted read ymade fashiOn, by mounting blue-sprayed

sponges on pedestals. Klein emphasized the performativenature of malcing art--when he made paintings by exposing a colored support to such external, non art elementsas fire and rainwater or by emptying the canvas of all butits irreducible condition of flat, monochrome, rectangularshape, he briefly merged extremes of bod1 materiality andimmateriality that would characterize sixties art (see figs.21.60, 21.63). Klein's investigations of pure abstraction(for example, his emphasis on the chemical pigment that beused for bis deep, meditative blue) exemplified a tendencytoward progressive simplification that by the end of thedecade would be known by such terms as :.Minimalism,ABC art, or Primary Structures. While these developments

may be seen as a necessary correction of fillies heroics,the new abstractionists would evince heroics of their own,both n the sheer size of their works and in their ambition

to provide an alternative to the dominant critical discourseof Clement Greenberg and his followers. Greenberg haddefined modernism as the consistent and exclusive engageme& of painting and sculpture wi th the qualities essentialto t;hem-namely, their optical surfaces-believing that

what counts first and last in art is ·quality, judged byformal aesthetic standards.

Pop art, thanks to its ability to entertain a newly affluent,status-conscious mass audience, may have earned its titleby becoming the most popular development ever to haveoccurred in the higher reaches of culture. Duri ng the six-ties, however, before the underlying complexity of Pop bad

.?een fully appreciated, it was abstraction that dominatedWithin the world of art itself, mainly because its essentialsobriety and internal processes of self-purification engagedthe attention ofthe most serious critics and thinkers.

rawing the Veil: Post PainterlyColor Field AbstractionA number of exhibitions held n the sixties drew attent ionto certain changes that were occurring n American painting. Between 1959 and 1960, Clement Greenberg wasinstrumental in mounting a ·series of solo exhibitions at the

New York gallery French and Company for sucl;).artists asB_arnett Newman, David Smith, Morris Louis, KennethNoland, and Jules Olitslci. Dnting the next few years, sev-eral ·museums followed suit with exhibitions designed todraw attention to new directions in American art. Amongthese shows were American Abstract Expressionists andImagists at New York's Guggenheim Museum in 1961;Toward a New Abstraction at New York's Jewish Musemnin 1963; Post-Painterly Abstraction, organized in 1964 byClement Greenberg for the Los Angeles County Museumof Art; and . Systemic Painting, curated in 1966 byLawrence Alloway at the Guggenheim Museum.

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These exhibitions illustrated that many young artistswere attempting to break away from what they felt to bethe tyranny of Abstract Expressionism, particularly n itsemphasis on the individual brush gesture. Some of theseartists turned to representational art forms ranging fromminutely observed figuration to assemblages to Pop art,while others sought new means of retinal stimulationthrough Op art, or light and motion. Most suggestivewas the apparent development of abstract painting towhich a number of names have been applied, includingAbstract Imagism, Post-Painterly Abstraction, and, mostcommonly, Color Field painting, (sometimes simplifiedto Field painting). Still other terms have been applied tovarious aspects of this direction during the sixties-suchas Systemic, Hard- Edge, and Minimalist painting. Theselabels, referring to various types of abstract painting, do notnecessarily encompass all the same artists or all the directions involved-which range from forms of allover painting to almost blank canvases. The emphasis throughout,however, is on abstract painting in distinction to figuration, optical illusion, o b j e c ~malting, fantasy, light, motion,or any of the other tendencies away from the act ofpaint ing itself.

Among all the painters working against the current iffgestural Abstract Expressionism n the late fifties there ~ s

a general move (as Greenberg pointed out) to openness ofdesign and image. Many of the artists turned to the technique of staining raw canvas and moved toward a clarityand freshness that differentiated their works from those ofthe Abstract Expressionists, which were characterized bycompression and brushwork. The directions and qualitiessuggested in the work of these artists--..ome already well

established, some just beginning to appear on the s c e ~ e -were to be the dominant directions and qualities in abstractpa}.nting during the _sixties.

Francis and MitchellGreenberg's inclusion of Sam Francis (1923-9_4) amonghis Post-Painte.t:ly abstractionists may seem somew hatsurprising, since Francis during the fifties was associatedwith American Abstract Expressionism and r t Informel in

Paris, where he lived until 1961. As Greenberg explainedin the introduction to the exhibition catalogue of PostPainterly Abstraction, Abstract Expressionism was charac

terized by its painterly quality, a term inspired by the useof the German word malerisch by the Swiss art historianHeinrich Wolfllin to describe Baroque art. st as Wolfflincontrasted the painterly quality of the Baroque with thecrisp linearity of High Renaissance art, so Greenberg identified Post-Painterly Abstraction with more sharply definedcompositions and less emphasis on evidence of the artist'sgesture. According to Greenberg: By contrast with theinterweaving of light and dark gradations in the typicalAbstract Expressionist picture, all the artists in this showmove towards a physical openness of design, or towardslinear clarity, or towards both.''

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I ·,.··.22 1 Sam Francis, Shining Back 1958 Oil on canvas, 6'7%X 4 ' 5 ' ~(2 X 1 35 mi. Solomon R Guggenheim Museum,New York.

Despite Francis's assoaat:Lon with Abstract Express-ionism. or painterly art, the direction of his painting hadbeen tOWard that compositional openness and formal clar-ity of which Greenberg spoke. Shining Back (fig. 22.1),1958, presents an open structure that is animated, but notobscured, by Francis's continued use of brush gesture, thedrip, and the spatter. In later works, despite lingering ves-tiges 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 spaintings of the early seventies (fig. 22.2) increasingly

emphasized the edge to the point h e r ~ h i spaint spattersat times surround a clear or almost clear center area of can-vas. At times he uses a precise linear structure as a controlfor his free patterns of stains and spatters, and has createdan elegant and lyrical form of abstract art.

An artist also sometimes categorized as a Color Fieldpainter is Joan Mitchell 1926-92), one of the youngerartists associated with Abstract Expressionism during thefifties, along with Francis and others. From the i t i ~

onward, Mitchell demonstrated a particular interestevoking her relationship to landscape, initially referring ~

both natural and urban environments, often in terms of a


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Sam Francis, Untitled No. 11 1973. Acrylic on canvas, 8 X 10 (2.4 X 3 m . Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York.,•

remembered time arid place, s in August ue Daguerre1957). Mitchell moved permanently to France in 1959,

living first in Paris and then in Vetheuil, where she continued to pursue her own directions in painting, undeterred

by the popularity of Pop and Op art. In the mid-sixties,Mitchell expunged references to urban settings from herwork and from then on turned predominantly to natur e forinspiration fig. 22.3 .

22.3 Joan Mitchell,Land 1989. Oil oncanvas, 9 ' 2 ~ X 13 1 W(2.8 X 4 m . NationalGallery of Art,Washington, D.C.

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Frankenlhaler, Louis, and OlitskiAn importarit figure in the transition between AbstractExpressionism and Color Field painting is HelenFrankenthaler (b. 1928). Frankenthaler was the firstAmerican painter after Jackson Pollock to see the implications of the color staining of raw canvas to create an lntegration of color and ground in which foreground andbackground cease to exist. Mountains nd Sea 1952, herfirst '(stained painting, m ~ k e a turning point in hercareer. Having just returned from a vacation in NovaScotia, the artist found herself experfi?enting with composition and consistency of paint. She recounts:

Before, I had always painted on sized and primed canvasbut my paint was becoming thinner and more fluid andcried out to be soaked, not resting. In Mountains nd SeaI put n the charcoal line gestures first, because I wanted todraw in with color and shape the totally abstract memory

of he landscape. I spilled on the dra-wing in paint from thecoffee cans. The charcoal lines were original guideposts

that eventually became unnecessary.

During a visit to Frankenthaler's studio in 1953, MorrisLouis was so affected by Mountains nd Sea that he aAi-dKenneth Noland began to stain canvases themselves, establishing their own staining teclmiques. Frankenthaler's roleas the originator o f Post-Painterly Color Field pai nting hasbeen obscured by Greenberg's championing of Louis,Olitsld, and Noland as its major exponents in the latefifties-a distortion that might be explained by Greenbergand Frankenthaler's personal history (they had an affuir inthe early fifties, which ended when she left him).

22.4 Helen Frankenthaler, Interior Landscape 1964. Acrylicon canvas, 8'8%" X 7'8%" 2.7 X 2.4 m). San FranciscoMuseum of Modern Art.


22.5 Helen Frankenthaler, Essence Mulberry 1977. Woodcul,edition of 46, 9 ~ X 18W 1 00.3 X 47 em). Printed andpubl'ished by Tyler Graphics ltd.

Frankenthaler employs an open composition, frequentlybuilding around a free-abstract central image and alsostressing the picture edge (fig. 22.4 . The paint is appliedin uniformly thin washes. There is little, sometimes nosense of paint texture--a general characteristic of PostPainterly Color Field painting-'-although there is samegradation of tone around the edges of color-shapes, givingthem a sense of detachment from the canvas. The irregular

... .central motifs float within a rectangle, which, in turn, Isurrounded by irregular ligbt and dark frames. Theseframes create the feeling that the center of the painting is

opening up in a limited but defined depth.In 1960 Frankenthaler made her first prints. Since then

she has worked wi th a variety of printmalcing techniques inaddition to painting, using each of these media to explorpictorial space through the interaction of color and line onparticular surface. One of her most successful prints is Esse ICCMulberry, executed in 1977 (fig. 22.5 . Inspired y anexhibit of medieval prints at the Metropolitan Mnseu l1Art, Frankenthaler combined the shades of mulberry, blue


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and brown. The effect of he blended colors is as deland luminescent as that of her paintings.

Morris Louis (1912-62) was one of the talentedArneri


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yellow, and brown. The effect of he blended colors is as del·kate and lwninescent as that of her paintings.

Morris Louis (1912-62) was one of the talentedAmerican painters to emerge in the fifties. Living in

·washington, D.C. somewhat apart from the New Yorkscene and working almost in isolation, he and a group ofartists that included Kenneth Noland were central to thedevelopment of Color Field painting. The basic point

about Louis's work and that of other Color Field painters,in conu·ast to most of the other new approaches_ of the sixties, is that they continued a tradition of painting exemplified by Pollock, Newman Still, Motherwel l, and Reinhardtsee chapter 19). All of these artists were concerned with

the classic problems of pictorial space and the statement ofthe picture plane. Louis cl1aracteriEtically applied extremelyrunny paint to an unstretched canvas, allowing it to flowover the inclined surface in effects sometimes suggestive oftranslucent color veils. The importance of Frankenthaler'sexample in Louis's development of this technique has beennoted. However, even more so than Franlcenthaler, Louis

eliminated the brush gesture, although the flat, thin pig·mentis at times modulated in billowing tonal waves (fig.22.6 . i l ls veil · paintings consist of bands of brilliant,curving color-shapes submerged in translucent washesthrough whim they emerge principally at the edges.Although subd ued, the resulting color is immensely rim.In another formula, the artist used long, parallel strips ofpure color arranged side by side in rainbow effects.Although the separate colors here are clearly distinguished,the edges arc soft and slighrly interpenetrating (fig. 22.7).

Jules Olitski (b. 1922) might be seen as a man ofromantic sensibility expressing himself through the sensu-

22 6 Morris Louis,Kal 1959-60.Acrylic on canvas,8'4 X 12 (2.5 X3.7 m). CollectionKimikoand John G.Powers, New York.

22 7 Morris Louis, Moving In 96 .-Acrylic on canvas,7 3W X 3 5W (2.2 X 1.05 m). Andre Emmerich Gallery,New York.

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22 8 Jules Olitski, High a Yellow 1967 Acrylic on canvas, 7 8W X 12'6 [2 3 X 3 8 m). Whitney Museum of American Art,New York.

ousness o f his large, assertive color areas. In earlier workshe, like so many of his contemporaries, explored circleforms, but his were generally irregular, off-center, andinterrupted by tbe frame of tbe picture to create vaguely

organic effects reminiscent ofJeanArp. Moving away :Q:.omthese forms, Olitslci began, in about 1963, to saturate hiscanvas witb liquid paint, over which he rolled additionaland varying colors. In later works, such as High a Yellow,1967 (fig. 22.8), he sprayed on successive layers ofpigment in an essentially commercial process that still

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admitted a considerable degree of accident in surface drand spatters. The dazzling , varied areas of paint are definby edges or corners and perhaps internal spots of rougmodeled paint that control the seemingly limitless surfac

Sometimes apparently crude and cbloristically disturbinOlitski s flamboyant works are nevertheless arresting.

PoonsIn tbe sixties, Larry Poons (b. ·1937) created an intriguform of Systemic painting with optical-illusionistic impl

2 2 9 Larry Poons, NixMate, 1964 Acrylic ocanvas 5 10 X 9'4[1 78 2 8 m). Formcollection Robert C. ScN e w ~ r k


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In Nixes Mate 1964. (fig. 22.9), his small, brightlyellipses vibrate against their highly saturated back:Poons s painting, created through a process o fwas simultaneously identified as Color Field paint·

by Greenbergian formalists and as Optical art by otherwhen William Seitz included the artist s work in

1965 show The Responsive Eye at The Museum ofArt in New York. Poons subsequently placed

emphasis on the painterly surface of his work Histextured canvases frequently have long, vertically

brushstrokes, densely arranged in rich color patLike Olitski and the other Color Field painters,created large-scale works tltat would envelop thefield of the viewer, provoking a purely optical

' 'l 'VH ' to the image-the Greenbergian ideal for mod·painting.

an Oblique Angle DiebenkornTwombly

the trend toward progressively more radical abstractionint


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22 12 Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean ParkNo. 54 1972. Oil on canvas, 8'4 X 6'9(2.5 X 2. l m). San Francisco Museum ofModern Art.

a primary source, in addition to MondrMonet, and of course Abstract ExpressionDiebenkorn purified and monumentalizedpersonal vocabulary of mist- and light-fcolor planes emanating from but rigorocontained within a_ softly drawn a.rchitectuscaffolding. Pentirnenti (passages of pthrough which earlier paint layers are visiodd and oblique angles in the structural bders, and the expansiveness and close harmof he luminous colors work without benefihuman images to generate a sense of tenwithin the pervasive calm, a sense of presewithin figuratively empty fields.

After World War II and following a semter of study at Black Mountain College,slightly younger Cy Twombly (b. l9established a 1nore or less permanent basRome, where he too succeeded in calmlyoting his art on the convergence point of tdom and control, lucidity and opacity. A pas well as a painter and a sculptor, Twomfound his characteristic image in a slate-gground covered with white graffiti, drawintermingled with words and numbers,challc lessons half-erased on the blackboard

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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14 Cy Twombly,Hero and LeanderTriptych (Rome),]981 84. Oil and chalkon canvas, panel one5'6% X 6'8% I .68 X2.1 m); panels two andthree each 5'8 1.2" X

6'11\i (1.74 X2.1 m). CollectionGalerie Karsten Greve,Cologne, Germany.

22.15 Cy Twombly,Untitled 1978 (Roma).Wood, cloth, wire, nails,mat oil paint, l '5 X7'3% X 7% (0.43 X2.2 X 0.2 m). Privatecollection. On loan to theKunsthaus, ZUrich,Switzerland.

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the end of a busy school day (fig. 22.13). Sometimessnatches of personal verse, often brief quotations from aclassical source, a R.Vayslegible at first sight, though neverquite complete or entirely coherent on close examination,Twombly's scribbles ·and scrawls activate the surface vyithgestures as decisive as Pollock's, but, unlike those ofthe Abstract Expressionists, they remain i n d e . t e r m i 1 1 ~ t e .Additionally, Twombly's images suggest a hidden narrative, evoked in bold but enigmatic terms, such as the classical legend of the tragic love affair of Hero and Leander,depicted in a three-panel series testif)ri11g to their passion

and to the fury and progressive calming of the Hellespontin which the lovers drowned (fig. 22.14). Like many of hispaintings, Twombly's sculptures also find fi:equent inspiration in classical sources, as in his rendition of an elongated,delicately balanced chariot (fig. 22.15).

Forming the Unit: Hard-EdgePaintingThe term Hard-Edge was first used by the Californiacritic Jules Langsner in 1959, and then given its currentdefinition by Lawrence Alloway in 1959-60. According to

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Alloway, Hard-Edge was defined in opposition to geometric art, in the following way:- The 'cone, cylinder, andsphere' of cezanne fame have persisted in much 20thcentury painting. Even where these forms are not purelyrepreSented, abstract artists have tended toward a compilation of separable elements. Form has been treated as discrete entitie s/' whereas forms are few in hard-edge andthe surface .4nmilculate . . . , The whole picture becomes theunit; forms extend the length of the painting or arerestricted 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 betweenHard- Edge and the older geometric tradition is the searchfor a total unity in which there is generally no foregroundor background, no figures on a f i ~ l d .During the fifties,Ellsworth Kelly, Ad Reinhardt, Leon Polk Smith, AlexanderLiberman, Sidney Wolfson, and Agnes Martin (most ofthem 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 spaceand color explorations (see fig. 19.29).

Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923), who matnred artistically inParis following World War II, carne to be considered a

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22.16 Ellsworth Kelly, Window, Museum of Modern Art,. ~ o r i s

1949. Oil on wood and canvas, two joined panels, 5 ~·x1 9 ~X% (128.7 X 49.5 X 1.9 em). Private collection.

leader of the Hard- Edge faction within Color Field paint-ing, although he hirnself.expressed some discomfort withthis label. He explained to Henry Geldzahler in 1963,

I 'm interested in the mass and color, the black andwhite- the edges h appen because the. forms get as quiet asthey can be. Despite the abstract appearance of much ofKelly's pain ting, the artist drew extensively on his observa-tion of the natural forms around hini, as in Window

Museum of Modern Art Paris of 1949 (fig. 22.16). In1954 the artist returned to the States, settling in New Yorkamong a group of artists, inclutling Jasper Johns, RobertRauschenberg, Jack Youngerman, and Agnes Martin, who,like him, resisted the dominance of Abstract Expressionism.In New York, Kelly experiment ed with collage and contin-ued to develop his interest in shape and color and the rela-tionship of figure to ground. The influence of Arp wasevident t tin1es. His paintings of he early sixties frequentlyjuxtaposed fields of equally vibrant color, sq ueezing expan-sive shapes ·within the confines of a rectangular canvas (fig.22.17 . But just as tl e tension in tl ese canvases suggests,

532 CHAPTER 22 ' SIXTIES ABSTRACTION

22.17 Ellsworth Kelly, Orange and Green, 1966. liquilex [varnish) on canvas, 7'4 X 5 5 [2.2 X 1 65 m). CollectionRobert and Jane Meyerhoff, Phoenix, Maryland.

22.18 Ellsworth Kelly, Untitled {Mandorlo}, 1988. Bronze,8'5 X 4 5W X 1 9 [2.6 X 1.36 X 0.53 m).Private collection.


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19 jack Youngerman, Roundabout 1970. Acrylic ondiameter 8 (2.4 m). Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.

shapes frequently exploded from the rectangular frame,becoming artworks then1selves that undermined the distinction between painting and sculpture. Kelly continuedto work in a similar vein; he did not differentiate betweenhis paintings and his sculptm·es, and some of his worksare difficult to classifY. Thus Untitled Mandorla) of 1988fig. 22.18 , a bronze distillation of a form common in

medieval painting, gains much of its effect from its reliefprojection. Kelly also created freestanding sculptures,works that use forms similar to those of his paintings,although projected on an environmental scale and constructed industrially of Cor- ten steel.

Like Kelly, Jack Youngerman (b. 1926 developed hisart in Paris during the postwar years, courtesy of the GIBill, before returning to join the New York School in thefifties. He then became known for bringing a specialMatisse-like rhythm and grace to the Constructivist tradition by rendering leaf, flower, or butterfly forms with thebrilliantly colored flatness and clarity of Hard- Edge painting (fig. 22.19 . I n such work, he looked back not only toArp and Matisse, but also to the rhapsodic, nature-focusedart of painters who worked in the United S t a t e ~such asDove, O Keeffe, and Gorley (see figs. 18.17, 18.18, 19.3).For a while, he designed his undulant silhouettes so thatfigure and ground appear to reverse, with negative andpositive switching back and forth.

Although Ketmeth Noland (b. 1924 was close toLouis during the fifties and, like him, sought throughColor Field painting an essential departure from the brushgesture mode of De Kooning or Kline, his personal solutions were quite different from those of his fellowWashingtonian. Using the same thin pigment to stainunsized canvas, Noland made his first completely individual statement when, as he said, he discovered the center ofthe canvas. Frmn this point, between the mid-fifties and1962, his principal image was the circle or a series of con-

22.20 Kenneth Noland, A Warm Sound n a Gray Field1961. 6 10W X 6'9 2.1 X 2.06 m). Private collection,New York.

centric circles exactly centered on a square ·canvas (fig.22.20 . Since this relation of circle to square was necessarily, ambiguous, in about 1963 Noland began to experimentwfth different forms, first ovoid shapes placed above center,arid then meticulously symmetrical chevrons st9-rting in theupper corners and coming to a point just above the exactcenter of the bottom edge (fig. 22.21 . The chevrons, bytheir placement as well as their composition, :gaye a newsignificance to the shape of the canvas and c r e a ~ e da total,unified harmony in which color and structure, canvas planeand edges, are integrated.

In 1964 Noland was a featured painter at the United~ States pavilion of the Venice Biennale, and in ~ 9 6 he was

given a solo exhibition a t the Jewish Museum. It was about

22.21 Kenneth Noland, Golden Day 1964. Acrylic oncanvas, 6 X 6' (1.8 X 1.8 m). Private collection.

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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

this time that Noland , working within personally definedlimits of color and shape relationships, systematically

expanded his vocabulary. The symmetrical chevrons werefollowed by asymmetrical examples. Long, narrow paintings with chevrons only slightly bent led to a series inw.which he-eXplored systems of hmizontal strata, sometimeswith color variations on identical strata, sometimes vvithigraded horizontals, as in Graded xposure (fig. 22.22 . Inthe next few years the artist moved fi·om the solution ofGraded xposure to a formula of vertical orhorizontal canvases in which his use of thegrid allowed a dominant emphasis to fall onthe framing edge. In his subsequent work,Noland has continued to explore the rela

tionship of form and color to the edge of thecanvas itself, manipulating the shape of thecanvas as well as the painted surface.

AI Held (b. 1928 was one of thestrongest of the sixties abstractionists both inhis forms and in his use of color, but, unlikemost of the other Color Field painters, whoeliminated brushstrokes and paint texture,Held built up his paint to create a texturethat added to the total sense of weight andrugged power. He worked over his pain t surfaces, sometimes layering them to a thickness

of an inch, although, from 1963, he sandeddown the surface to a machine precision. Fora period in the sixties, Held based paintingson letters of the alphabet (fig. 22.23 . Inthese, again, the open portions of the letterswere subordinated, both to hold the edges ofthe canvas and to establish a sense of greatscale. Held focused on the powerful presence

22.23 AI Held, /von the Terrible 1961.Acrylic on canvas, 12' X 9'6 [3.7 X 2.9 m .Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York.


of colored forms on the canvas, rather than on the Jess tangible, more self-consciously optical effect of stained colo

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 reductivetrend in contemporary painting. He introduced o m p

apparently three-dimensional shapes in to his paintings. Theinsistent exploration of a version of igid geometric abstraction led Held through the refinement of his means to


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22.24 AI Held, Flemish IX 197 4. Acrylic on canvas,6 X 5 (1.8 X 1.52 m . Soble-Castelli Gallery, Toronto.

22.25 AI Held, Mantegnas Edge 1983. Mural, acrylic oncanvas, length 55 (16.8 m . Southland Center, Dallas.

black-and-white structure. In a group of paintings of l974and early 1975 he presented an architecture of boxlikestructures outlined in white against a uniform blackground (fig. 22.24 . The title Flemish in the series suggests that Held, like many of his contemporaries in theseventies, had been looking at o ld master paintings, in thisinstance conceivably the works of Jan van Eyck or Rogiervan der Weyden.

Along with the black paintings with white linear structures, he exhibited their counterparts, consisting of blacklines on a flat white ground . In earlier examples, the perspective structures were heavily outlined. In a number ofthe white paintings, however, some lines became muchmore delicate, mixed with weightier ones. Transparent,curvilinear elements became increasingly do minant s partof the total spatial interplay.

When Held reintroduced color, he did so with avengeance, adop ting a high-keyed intensity combined withan expanded scale to give his newer paintings an almostoverwhelming impact s in his fifty-five foot (16.8 m)-long

mmal Mantegna s Edge at the Southland Center, Dallas(fig. 22.25 . The color combined with his handling of ineproduces the paradoxical effect of clarity and ambiguity.rA\ages constantly fail to con-form to what experience andtqtdition have prepared us to anticipate in the apparentlylogical spatial structures Held creates. And so, s within the

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perpetual moven1ent of Pollock's calligraphic complexity,the eye gives up trying to sort out the irresolutions andaccepts the experience of the total configuration.

Seeing Things Op rt

Several broadly related tendencies in tbe painting of tbesixties may be grouped under tbe heading of Optical or

Retinal) painting. Optical in this context should not econfused with tbe quality of opticality tbat Greenbergianformalists attributed to modernist painting. For them,opticality meant the sense of a flat, nonillusionistic imagethat seemed to deny tbe necessity of physical support. Bycontrast, the optical stimulation of Op art implied tbe presence of an illusion generated by the stimulation of theretina. What is called Op art overlaps at one end witb lightsculpture or construction (in its concern with illusion, perception, and the physical and psychological impact ofcolor) and witb tbe effects of light experiments on tbespectator. At the other end, it impinges on some aspects of

Color Field painting in its use of brilliant, unmodulatedcolor in retinally stimulating combinations, especially asseen in the art of Larry Poons. Op art carne to the forefrontof tbe New York art world in 1965 with William Sei t t \exhibition, The Responsive Eye, at The Museum o fModern Art. Altbough a range of artists were included,among tbem Color Field painters and Hard-Edge abstractionists, Such as Larry Poons, Morris Louis, KennethNoland, and Ellswortb Kelly, it was immediately clear tbatOp ai·t reprCsented something new. Op art activelyengaged tbe physiology and psychology of seeing witb eyeteasing arrangements of color and pattern that seemed

to pulsate. Such works generated strong a s s o c i a t i o n ~withscience and teclmology. Interestingly, altbough Op artenjoyed much popular interest in the United States, it gcnCrited tnore serious critical acclaim in Europe, with lightsculptor Julio Le Pare claiming first prize at the VeniceBiennale in 1966.

Optical illusion is not new ill the history of art; nor is theoverlap it implies between artistic rendition and scientifictheories of vision. Examples from the last five hundredyears include the discovery, or rediscovery, of linear andatmospheric perspective in the fifteenth century; the interest of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters such as

GeorgesS ~ u r a t

in nineteenth-century themies of color andperception; and the experimentation of several Bauhausartists, like L\szl6 Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers, withsirnila.i· questions. This examination of the Optical andkinetic art of the sixties surveys some of the approachestaken by artists during this period to forms of art involvingoptical illusion or seine other specific aspect of perception

of course, as we have already seen, such concerns were notlimited to Op and kinetic artists alone).

Op art also inspired a movement toward allover painting, in which a network or a mosaic of color strokes or dotscovers the canvas and seems to expand beyond its limits.

5 6 CHAPTER 2 2 o SIXTIES ABSTRACTION

During the sixties Lany Poons created a seenlingl)'h all .azard but actu y meTiculously programmed mosaismall oval shapes that vibrate intensely over a groundstrong color (see fig. 22.9). The organization of p

0 ocolor-shap(Os, worked out mathematically on graph p

awas another indication of the tendency toward systems to what, in the sixties, was called Systemic painting.

VasarelyThe Hungarian-French painter Victor Vasarely (1908-9was the most influential figure in the realm of OpAlthough his earlier paintings belonged in the generaldition of Concrete art, in the forties Vasarely devoted hself to Optical art and theories of perception. Vasarclistbeories, first presented in his 1955 Yellow anifeinvolved the replacement of traditional easel paintingwhat he called kinetic p l ~ s t i c s .To him, paintingsculpture become anachronistic terms: it is more exacspeal< of a bi-, tri-, and multidimensional plastic art.no longer have distinct manifestations of a creative s

ibility, but the development of a single plastic sensibility

22 26 Victor Vasarely, Sorafa-T 1953Triplych, engraved glass sbbs, 6'6 X 15'[2 X 4 6 m . Private collection.


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22 21 Victor Vasarely, Vega Per 1969 Oil on canvas,64 X 64 (162.6 X 162.6 em). Honolulu Academy of Arts.

different spaces." Vasarely sought the abandonment ofpainting as an individual gesture, the signature of theisolated artist. In a modern, technical society, he believedd1at art had to have a social context; he saw the work of artas the artist's original idea rather than as an object consisting of paint on canvas. This idea, realized in terms of flat,geometlic-abstract shapes mathematically organized, withstandardized colors, flatly applied, could t hen be projected,reproduced, or multiplied irito different forms-mutals,books, tapestries, glass, mosaic, slides, filins, or television.For -the traditional concept of the work of art as a uniqueobject produced by an isolated artist, Vasarely subs titutedthe concept of social art, produced by the artist in fullcommand of modern indusu-ial communication techniquesfor a mass audience.

Vasarely was a pioneer in the development of almostevery optical device for the creation of a new art of visualillusion. His Photographismes are black-and-white linedrawings or paintings. Some of hese were made specificallyfor reproduction, and in them Vasarely frequently coveredthe drawing with a transparent plastic sheet. The plastic

sheet has the same design as the drawing but in a reverse,negative-positive relationship. When the two drawingson paper and on plastic-are synchronized, the result issimply a denser version. As the plastic is drawn up anddown over tbe paper, tbe design cbanges tangibly beforeour eyes. Here, literal movement creates the illusion. Thisand many furtber devices developed by Vasarely and otberOp artists produced refinements of processes long familiarin games of illusion or halls of mirrors.

In his Deep Kinetic Works Vasarely translated the principle of the plastic drawings into large-scale glass consu·uctions, such as the 1953 ·Sorata-T (fig. 22.26), a standing

triptych, six-and-a-half by fifteen feet (2 X 4.6 m) indimension. The three u·ansparent glass screens may beplaced at various angles to create different combinations ofthe linear patterns. Such art lends itself to monumentalstatements that Vasarely was able to realize in murals)ceramic walls, and large-scale glass consu-uctions. What hecalled his "Refractions" involve glass or mirror effects withconstantly changing images.

Since Vasarely was aware of the range of optical effectspossible in black and white, a large proportion of his workis limited to these colors, referred to by the artist simply as

B N (blanche nair: white black). It was, nevertheless, incolor that tbe full range of possibilities for Optical paintingcould be realized, and Vasarely was well aware of this. Inthe sixties, his color burst out with a variety and brillianceunparalleled in his career. Using small, standard colorshapes-squares, u-iangles, diamonds, rectangles, circles,sometimes frontalized, sometimes tilted, in fLat, brilliantcolors against equally strong contrasting color groundshe set up retinal vibrations that dazzle the eye and bewilder perception (fig. 22.27).

~ i l yand AnuszkiewiczThe British artist Bridget Riley (b. 1931) and tbe4unerican artistRichardAnuszkiewicz (b. 1930) have beenresponsible for producing highly acclaimec examples of Opart. Initially working primarily in black and white and different values of gray, vvith repeated, serial units :froptalizedand tilted at various angles, Riley produced extremely effective illusions, seemingly malcing the picture plane weave andbillow before our eyes. Her use of variations in tone (whichVasarely rejected) accentuates the illusion (fig. 22.28). Byconu-ast, Anuszkiewicz, a student of Josef Albers, often

22.28 Bridget Riley, Drill No. 2 1966. Emulsion on canvas,7 7W X 7 5W (2.3 X 2.3 m). Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.

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22 29 Richard Anuszkiewicz, Inflexion 1967. Liquitex oncanvas, 60 X 60 l52A X l52A em , Collection the artist

used color and straight lines to achieve pulsating. visualeffects in his painting-frequently defYing our ability todistinguish background and foreground in his works or tSidentifY whether a given plane is moving forward or reced;ing, In inflexion (fig, 22.29) he skillfully reversed thedirection of the radiating lines on each side of the square,thus making what at a quick glance looks like a traditionalperspective box suddenly beg in to turn itself inside out,

ew Medi a Mobilized Motionand ight

;

Two directions explored sporadically since early in thetwentieth century gained new impetus in the sixties. Theseare motion and light used literally, rather than as paintedor sculptured illusions. Duchamp's and Gabo's pioneeringexperiments in motion and Moholy-Nagy's in motion andlight have already been noted (see fig, 17,1), Before WorldWar II, Calder was the one artist who made a major artform of motion (see fig, 17.2 9), Except for fiu:ther explorations carried on by Moholy- Nagy and his students duringthe thirties and forties, the usc of light as a medium waslimited to variations on color organs, in which programmed devices of one kind or another produced shiftingpatterns of colored lights. These originated in experimentscarried on in 1922 at tl1e Bauhaus by Ludwig HirschfeldMack 1893-1965) and by the American Thomas Wilfred

1889-1968), inventor of the color organ. The late sixtiessaw a revival in the use of light as an art form and in socalled mixed media, where the senses are assaulted by liveaction, sound, light, and motion pictures at the same time.

Gabo revived his interest in mechanical motion in theearly forties, and in about 1950 Nicolas Schaffer beganusing electric motors to activate his constructions. Duringthe fifties and sixties, artists' interest in light and motion


gathered pace through a sedes of exhibitions and I. . f . a Alth tlorgarnzatton o expenment groups. ough kineti

, . ~hght art has become a worldwide movement, the first r. ' E u l 1 ' gcaImpetus came 1rom urope, partie ar y 1rom Fra

neGermany, and Italy. Begi nning in 1955 a center for its P entation was the Denise Rene Gallery in Paris, f o r m estronghold for the promotion of Concrete art. In that ea

a large exhibition held there included kinetic works b

Duchamp, Calder, Vasarely, Yaacov Agarn, Pol Bur1, )· , caTinguely, and Jesus Rafael Soto. The first phase of he nemovement climaxed in the great exhibition held sequetially at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the LouisianMuseum in Derunark, and the Moderna MuseetStockholm. This was a vast and somewhat chaotic assembrepresentative of every aspect of the history of light a

motion, actual or illusionistic, back to the origins of thautomobile and to Eadweard Muybridge's nineteentscentury photographic smdies ofhmnan and animal figurin motion (see fig. 2.33). Although the e x h i i t i o ndid ndraw any conclusions, it did illustrate dramatically that t

previous few years had seen a great acceleration of nterein these problems. The popular curiosity abou t this artevinced by the fact that the exhibitions were seen by wover one hundred thousand people. During the sixtiexhibitions of light and motion proliferated throughoutthe world, involving increasing numbers of artists.

The arts of light and motion encouraged a numbernew artists' organizations and manifestos during the lafifties and sixties. It was in 1955, .in connection vvith tMovement exhibition at the Denise Rene Gallery in Parthat Victor Vasarely issued his Ydlow Manifesto outlininhis theories of perception and color. Another important

theoretician wasBruno

Manari (b.1907),

who was prducing kinetic works in Italy as early as 1933. ActiveSpain, Equipo 57 (founded in 1957) represented a groof artists who worked as an anony1nous team in the expration of motion and vision. This anonymity, deriving fi:concepts of the social implications of art and also, perhafrom the examples of scientific or industrial research teamwas evident at the outset in the Group T in Milan, foundin 1959; Group N in Padua, Italy, founded in 1960; aZero Group in Dusseldorf, Germany, founded in 1957the kinetic artist Otto Piene. In most cases the theoreticalpassion for anonymity soon dimmed, and the artists begto emerge as individuals. .s

Mobiles ond Kinetic ArtAlthough not usually labeled as a sutles kinetic artAlexander Calder (1898-197 6 ), whose prewar career Wdiscussed in chapter 17, merits fw:ther discussion herehis important example and continued influence in the aoflcinetic sculpmre. From the late forties he had developea g ~ o w i n ginterest in monumental forms, and in the traformation of the mobile to a great architectural-sculpnu·alwind machine whose powerful but precisely balanmetal rods, tipped with large, flat, organically shaped dis


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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.

encompass and define large areas of architecturalspace. Since the mobile, powered by currents of air,could function better ou tdoors than indoors, Calderbegan early to explore the possibilities for outdoormobiles. Critical to the development of these workswas his reconceptualization of the mobile as something that could f mction as an autonomous, standing structure, combining interrelated stable andmobile fonns in an organic whole. In the late fifties

and sixties, Calder created many large, standingmobile units that rotate in limited but impressivemovement over a generally pyramidal base.

s The Spiral (fig. 22.30) suggests, the develop·ment of Calder s moving sculptures bore an important relationship to the development of nonmovingelements in his structures. One of his signal achievements of the sixties occurred in his great stabiles -his large-scale, nonmoving, metal-plate constructions,usually painted black. O f these, one of the mostimpressive is the glowing red a Grande Vitesse (fig.22.31 in Grand Rapids·, Michigan; an expansive

22.31 Alexander Calder, a Grande Vitesse 1969. Painted steelplate, height 55 116.8 m). Calder Plaza, Vandenberg Center, GrandRapids, Michigan.



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work with which_ Calder filled an otherwise sterile publicspace with Mir6-like charm and radiant splendor. Whilesuggesting a g reat exotic flower in its prime or the expressive movements of a dancer, the assemblage of red biomorpbic planes boldly displays the structure of its rivetsand struts and testifies to the forces involved in creating it.

Among the makers of mobiles, one of the most interesting to emerge in the United States since World War II

was George Rickey (1907-2002). Rickey composed long,tapering strips or leaf clusters of stainless steel in a state ofbalance so delicate that the slightest breeze or touch of thehand sets them into a slow, stately motion or a quiveringvibration (fig. 22.32). During the seventies, Rickeyenlarged his vocabulary with the introduction oflarge-scalerectangular, circular, and triangular forms in aluminum, soprecisely balanced that they maintain the possibility ofimperceptible and increasingly intricate patterns in movement. His was an art of motion entirely d ifferent fi·om thatof Calder.

Jesus Rafae Soto (b.1923)is amotion

that his constructions, consisting of exquisitely·etal rods, are sensitive to the point that even

in atmosphere vvill st:·wt an oscillation (fig.Venezuelan resident of Paris, Soto began as an llllls i:painter and·then moved to a form ~ l i n e rco.nstrm:tic, 11ing the sixties. He developed a personal idiomgance, sometimes translated into a form of wge-sc.\

architecture involving spectator participation. HleXJllbitio,,at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum inand the Hirshhorn Museum and SculptureWashington, D. C., he created out of his typical plastic str 1 . .entire room environments that the spectator could enter.

Artists Working with LightO f the light experimentalists, the Argentine Julio Le Pa(b. 1928) was one of he most imaginative and varied inemployment of every conceivable device of light, moment, and illusion (fig. 22.34). The awarding to him

22.33 Jesus Rafael Sota, Petite otbie Face 1967Wood and metal, 23% X 15 (60 X 38.1 cml.Marlborough Gallery, New York.

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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22 34 Julio e Pare, Continuei-Lumiere avec Formes enContorsion 1966. Motorized aluminum and wood, 6'8 X4'W' X 8 (2 X I .23 X 2 m). Howard Wise Gallery,New York.

the painting prize at the 1966 Venice Biennale was notonly a recognition of his talents but also an official recognition of the new artistic media. From 1958 Le Pare livedin Paris where, in 1960, he was a founder of he Groupe deRecherche d Art Visuel ( GRAV). With its home base at theDenise Rene Gallery, this group carried on research inlight, per ception, movement, and illusion. Le Pare becamean important link between various overlapping but normally separate tendencies in the art of the sixties: not onlylight and movement, but also different -forms of optical,illusionistic painting, and programmed art.

The Greek artist Chryssa (b. 1933) bridged the gapbetween Pop art and light sculpture. She first exploredemblematic or serial relief forms composed of identical,rhythmically arranged elements of projecting circles orrectangles. Then in the early sixties she made lead reliefsderived from newspaper printing forms. From this Chryssapassed to a type of found-object sculpture in which sheused fragments of neon signs. The love of industrial orcommercial lettering, whether fron1 newspapers or signs,became a persistent aspect of her works. In this she wasrecording the American scene in a manner analogous tothe Pop artists or to the earlier tradition of Stuart Davisand Charles Demuth. Soon her fascination with the possibilities of light, mainly neon tube light, completely tookover her construction of elaborate l-ight machines so that

22.35 Chryssa, Ampersand Ill, 1966. Neon lights in Plexiglas,

height 30){ 76.8 em). Collection Robert E. Abrams Family.

they came to resemble contemporary American industdalobjects (fig. 22.35).

--: Perhaps the most significant group effort in the United-States was EAT Experiments in Art and TechnolOgywhich developed from a series of performances involvingRobert Rauschenberg, the engineer Billy KlUver, and thecomposer John Cage. Presented in 1966, Evenings:Theater nd Engineering involved dance, electronic ·music,and video projection. These presentations may be tracedback to experiments carried on by Cage since the forties aswell as a collaborative exhibition held at the Denise ReneGallery in Paris in 1955. Experiments by GRAV, sponsoredby the Rene Gallery during the fifties and sixties, also anticipated the EAT group in the utilization of sophisticatedtechnology and effects of light and m o v e m e n t ~ E Tp r ~

haps extended the collaborative effort furthest in its attraction of large-scale financial support, particularly for itsPepsi-Cola Pavilion at the Osalca World s Fair of 1970.

A number of artists, including Dan Flavin (1933-96),Larry Bell (b. 1939), and Robert Irwin (b. 1928), combined an interest in technology and _light with the principles of Minimalism, to be discussed at· greatet length in thefinal section of this chapter. Dan Flavin exploited the fluorescent fn:tures with which he worked for their luminosity,but also took advantage of their status as objects themselves. In his works, the glass tubes of fluorescent light

CHAPTER 22 ' SIXTIES ABSTRACTION 5 4 1


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functioned as sculpture both when illuminated and when

unlit, creating different effects. In turn, he recognized thatlight itself could transform an environment, as his 1992installation (a reworking of an earlier version fi·om l 9 ~ J

at the newly renovated Guggenheim demonstrated (fig.22.36). In a spirit similar to that of Dan Flavin, Larry Be]produced large vacuum-coated glass boxes that bothintrigue viewers with their shimmering iridescence andforce their audience to confront them as objects, ratherthan as pure visual effect. The art of Robert Irwin transforms the environment of the viewer even more radically.

n,, ' .,;.,,U »JioTracy to celebrate the love of 0lifetime), 1992, expanded versioof Untitled to Ward Jackson, onold friend and colleague whoduring the Fall of 1957 when 1finally returned to ew York romWashington and joined him towork together in this museum

kindly communicated), 1971.

Asystem of two alternating modulaunits in fluorescent light, sixteenwhile bulbs, each 2 (0.6 m)longfour each of pink, yellow, green,and blue, each 8 (2.4 mllong.Solomon R. Guggenheim MuseuNew York.

Working with tightly stretched semitransparent tex

scrims, which are lighted from behind, he creates an eeisolated environment with a hypnotic effect (fig. 22.37).One is drawn toward what appears to be an impenetrablvoid that, upon contemplation, increasingly surroundsspectator. Irwin s interest in the void may have its rootsthe empty gallery of Yves Klein, but Irwin greatly devoped the earlier concept. Irwin has also worked outdoorcreating public sculptures inspired by the environmentwhich ~ yare installed and intended to invite the partpation of tl1eir audiences (fig. 22.38 .

22.37 Robert Irwin, Unfilled, 1965-67. Acr ic aulomob rle lacquers on prepared, shaped aluminum with metal tubes, four 150floodlights. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

542 CHAPTER 22 SIXTIES ABSTRACTION


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22.38 Robert Irwin 9 Spaces, 9 Trees july 7, 1983. Cast ~ n r e t eplanters; Kolorgaard % 1.59 cml aperture,plastic-coated blue fencing; Visuvius plum trees; and Sedum Or8ganium ground cover. Public Safety BuildingPlaza, Seattle, Washington.

The imits o Modernism MinimalistSculpture nd PaintingI t will be clear by now that several trends characterize the

painting and sculpture of the sixties, with a· nmnber ofblurring the distinction between these two media.has been discussed less explicidy is the ideological

background to the various approaches tO art-making, particularly sculpture, during this decade. With the publication of Clement Greenberg's collection of essays r t and

ulture in 1961 and the continued success of the AbstractExpressionist artists whose work he had championed sincethe forties, Greenberg's influence was at a height.However, just when his modernist, formalist viewpointprevailed, artists began to question the basis for his valuations of excellence. According to Greenberg, the best mod

ern art should continue the historical trajectory of paintingsince the time of Manet, which he understood to involve aprogressive evolution toward flatness as artists becameincreasingly effective at exploiting those qualities specific tothe medium of paint. For Greenberg, even sculpture was tobe judged by the same criterion of displaying opticalityrather than illusionistic volume.

The most serious, protracted questioning of these ideaswas undertaken by artists who came to be known asMinimalists. They frequendy saw themselves not as attacking modernism but as pushing modernism's logic to itslimits, where many possibilities for art that were not con-

tained within Greenberg's prescriptive modernism openedout. Much of this grmmd had been prepared earlier in thetwentieth century, for example by Duchamp's erasure ofthe distinction between ordinary objects and art objects, o r

Neo-Dada's concern with the nature .Of signs. To d1e·-'extent that Postmodernism was both a development from

and a reaction to modernism, Minimalist art can be seen tohave a historically pivotal role.

I f Pop, Op and kinetic art can be considered departuresfrom the priorities of Greenbergian modernism, Minimali,smoffered a particularly poignant alternative to these ideals.The term Minimalism was coined in 1965 to characterize an art of extreme visual reduct ion, but many Minimalistartists resisted its application to their work. Although thepronounced simplicity of their works was ostensibly inkeeping with Greenbergian principles of truth to ri1c

medium and the evolution of flatness-that s ~elimination of the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface-Minimalism also served to undermine this version ofmodernism. Minimalist artists discussed their ideaS in print,providing an intellectual justification fur their dissatisfac·tion with modernist criticism. With Greenberg and his fol·lowers advocating that painting should embrace thosequalities unique to the medium (flatness, pictOrial surface,.and the eftect of pure opticality) and that sculpture shouldaspire to similar goals (an emphasis on surface and opticaleffect), Minimalist artists began agitating against thesupremacy of painting and, above all, to stress the primacy

CHAPTER , SIXTIES ABSTRACTION 5 4


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of he object itself Greenberg's protCgC Michael Fried perceived the seriousness of the conflict, observing in 1967that, There is . . . a sharp contrast between the literalist[i.e., Minimalist] espousal of objecthood-almost, itseems, as an art in its own right-and modernist painting'sself-imposed imperative that it defeat or suspend its ownobjectbood tbrougb the medium of shape, Minimalistartists denied the modernist belief that works of art should

be autonomous-that they should exist in their own termsirrespective of context a n d instead considered the importance of a work's environment. They often took intoaccount theories of the psychology of perception andemphasized the importance of the audience's interactionwith their pieces, arguing that art need not be absorbedfrom a single viewpoint in a purely optical fashion.Minimalist art considered not only the eyes of the spectator, but also the body.

CaroIn order to understand the relationship between mod

ernism and Minimalism, it is helpfitl to consider the workof a key sixties modernist, the young British sculptorAnthony Caro (b. 1924). Caro was particularly influenced .Ifby the example of Henry Moore, for whom he worked ail

an assistant be,tween 1951 and 1953, Subsequently,began to expenment vVIth new matenals and with the prduction of welded metal sculpture. e was encouragedpursue this direction by a lengthy trip in 1959 to t United States, where he met Clement Greenberg D

' avSmith, and Kenneth Noland (see figs. 19.39, 19.40, 19.4)22.20, 22.22). On returning to England, Caro workactively in a modernist vein, producing sculptures tl

stressed their presence as physical objects less than thdematerialized optical appearance. Greenberg's 1961 csson the sculpture of David Smith clarified the goal towawhich Caro's work strived:

To render substance entirely optical, and form, whetherpictorial, sculptural or architectural, as an integral part ofambient space-this brings anti-illusionism full circle.Instead of the illusion of things, we are now offered theillusion of modalities: namely, that matter is incorporeal,weightless and exists only optically like a mirage.

In similar fashion, Caro's works often seem to demateri

ize in front of the eye, registering their surfaces rather thany sense of bulle The bright planes of idday (fig. 22,39appear almost to float. Similarly, elements of Riviera (t22.40 seem to hover effortlessly in the air.

22.39 AnthonyCaro, Midday 1960. Painted steel, 7'7%" X 2 ' l l ' : i X 12'1%" (2.3 X 0.91 X 3.7 m).The Museum of Modern Art, New York.



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of Frank Stella (b. 1936) straddled the linethe modernism advocated by Greenberg and

11irllin.ali:;m. One of the yotmgest and most talented of theassociated with the new American painting of theStella first gained wide recognition in 1960 with

number of works exhibited by New York s MuseumModern Art during one of its periodic group showsAmerican artists, on this occasion entitled Sixteen

Arrtericarts The black paintings shown there were prinlarge, vertical rectangles, with an absolutely sy1n

22 40 AnthonyCora, Riviera1971-74. Rustedsteel, 10'7 X 27'X 10' (3.2 X 8.2X 3 m). CollectionMr. and Mrs.Bagley Wright,Seattle.

metrical pattern of ight lines forming regular, spaced rectangles moving inward from the canvas edge to the crucifoJiiU center. These lines were not formed by adding wbitepigment to the canvas-rather, they marked the areaswfuere Stella had ot laid paint down. In their balancedsymn1etry and repetition of identical motifS, Stella s paintings were related to experiments by Minimal or PrimaryStructure sculptors (fig. 22.41). They had, however, acompelling power of their own, which led modernist critics to praise their optical qualities. Over the next few years,using copper or aluminum paint, Stella explo red different

22.41 Fronk Stella, jaspers Dilemma 1962-63. Alkyd on canvas, 6'5 X 12' 1 0 (2 X 3.9 mi Collection Alan Power; london.

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shapes for the canvas, which were suggested by variationson his rectilinear pattern. In these, he used deep framingedges, which gave a particu lar sense of object solidity to thepainting. In 1964 the artist initiated a series of notchedV compositions, whose shapes resulted fi:om the joiningof arge chevrons. After some explorations of more coloristic rectangular stripe patterns, at times with optical effects,about 1967 Stella turned to brilliandy chromatic shapes,

interrelating protractor-drawn semicircles with rectangularor diamond effects. These prot racto r works (fig. 22.42)sometimes suggest abstract triptychs, with their circulartops recalling later Renaissance altarpieces. The apparentstress that these works placed on their qualities as objectswas extremely appealing to Minimalists. At the same time,two friends and former schoolmates of Stella's, the

22.42 frank Stella, gbatana Ill 1968. fluorescent acrylic ancanvas, 9'11\i X 14'11\i [3 X 4.6 m . Allen Memorial

Gallery, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.

Greenbergian critic Michae.l Fried and the MinirnaJ 1 t s antCarl Andre, both struggled for his allegiance. Fried redl 1 · d th th · d peae y c anne at e artist represente modernist .·· 1 Andr 1 d l 1 ' th · punCip es; · wor ce c ose y WI h1m and, when Stell

Black paintings were included in Sixteen America11

. 'c s,

wrote a statement about them at his request Aict1oug

22.43 frank Stella, Exhibition, 1971. lawrence Rubin Gallery, New York.

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22 44 Frank Stella The Pequod Meets the jeroboam Her Story Moby Dick Deckle Edges 1993 lithograph etching aquatintrelief, and mezzotint 7 0 X 65W [177 8 X 165 7 em . Printed and published by Tyler Graphics Ltd.

Stella refused to connect himself firmly with one groupor the other, his work continued to undermine any strictdivision between painting and sculpture.

In the seventies; Stella moved increasingly toward aform of three-dimensional painted relief, bold in color anddynamic in structure (fig. 22.43 . It became increasinglydifficult to tell i he works wefe paintings or sculptures, forby now the artist was using lac_ qlier and oil colors on aluminum bases. Since then, Stella has remained cqmmitted tohis abstractions, even as figurative work has increasingly

received significant critical attention. He offered a passionate defense of abstract art in 1983, when he gave a seriesof six lectures at Harvard University as the Charles EliotNorton Professor of Poetry. However, his works of thenineties challenge the distinction between abstraction andrepresentation, as Stella strived to pioduce reliefs that convey narrative significance in a nonfigurative fashion and yetincorporate forms that are suggestive of more naturalisticrepresentation (fig. 22.44 . Stella s works, while notstrictly antimodernist, have clearly challenged the narrow

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clitical categories defined by Greenbergian modernismboth in terms of form and content. As the art historiansCharles Harrison and Paul Wood pointed out, Stella s overtreference to Herman Melville s Moby-Dick in several worksoffering visual interpretations of poignant themes andmoments in the novel, ignores the Greenbergian demandthat art should be autonomous from literary content. IfStella s later art no longer retains obvious visual affinities

with sixties Minimalism, it neverd1cless reflects the legacyof the shift in critical discourse that Minimalism marked.

Smith, Judd, Bladen, and MarrisDespite the fact that the sculptor Tony Smith (1912-80)matured artistically during the forties and fifties, his mostimportant impact was felt during the sixties. e came to becelebrated by other Minimalists for pronouncements aboutthe nature of art in general, and about his art in particular,which helped to define the new approach of the group as awhole. Particularly influential was Smith s description of anighttime drive down an unfinished segment of the New

Jersey Turnpike in the fifties:

The drive was a revealing experience . . . [I]t did somethingfor me tha t art had never done. At first I didn t know what ·,it vvas, but its effect vvas to liberate me from many of thevieV\ S I had about art . . . I thought to myself, it ought tobe clear that s d1e end of art. Most painting looks prettypictorial after that. There is no way you can frame it, youjust have to experience it.

22.45 Tony Smith,Cigarette 1961-66 .

~ o o dmodel to bemade in steel, 15 X26 X 18 [4.6 X7.9 X 5.5 m).

5 4 8 CHAPTER 22 SIXTIES ABSTRACTION

22.46 Tony Smith, Die 1962. Steel, edition of three,6 X 6 X 6 [I .8 X 1.8 X I .8 m . Private collection.

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notion that one had to experience art, not merelyits significance by standing in front of t, manifested

in Smith's large, abstract pieces, which subvert tradicategories of sculpture and experience. Cigarette

Yn.l-•Jv, demands a physical interaction with the viewer22.45 ; as he or she rnoves around the sn·ucture, ceraspects of the work appear as others fude from sight.

memory and movement are required for the appreciof the work Despit e its association with an everyday,

Jsp•osable object, the sculpture is by no means pictorial;can it be easily cast aside or discarded.

Smith's ie of 1962 (fig. 22.46) has still more obviousiffi iati•ons with the common object from which its name

. However, its scale has been radically increased andcube bears none of a die's traditional markings. Die isan object that can be thrown thoughtlessly by a htunan

Instead, the steel sculpture cannot even be ade-perceived from a single, fi·ontal viewpoint. Again,

spectator must move afound the object, unable to graspits entirety, for ·the closer one gets , the larger the sculp

Ulre grows, remind ing its audience of the limits of perception itself.

Donald Judd (1928-94) was one of Minimalism'smost important sculptors and theorists. With his art criticism and, in particular, his 1965 essay Specific Objects, Juddhelped to define the convictions behind tl1e Minimalistquestioning of the traditional categories of painting andsculpture. As he -wrote in 1965, A work can be aspowerful as it can be thought to be. Actual space isintrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flatsurface . . . . A work need only be interesting. For Judd, thespecific object could not be classified as either a painting

or a sculpture, or even precisely described prior to its malc-ing, except in principle. The specific object was less aboutcreating particular structures and more about an attitudetoward art-malting.

Through his sculpture, Judd carried tl1e objective attitude to a point of extreme precision. He repeated identicalunits, often quadrangular, at regular intervals (fig. 22.47;fig. 22.48). These are made of galvanized iron or aluminum , occasionally ·with Plexiglas. Although Judd sometimes painted the aluminum in strong colors, he at firstused the galvanized iron in its original unpainted fortn,something that seemed to emphasize its neutrality.Progressively, however, Judd used color more frequently inhis work, which he began to have professionally manufactured in the mid-sixties.

22.47 ~ n a l djudd, Untitled, 1965. Galvanized iron, sevenboxes, each 9 X 40 X 31 (22.9 X 101.6 X 78.7 em[9 22.9 em between each box]. Hirshhorn Museum andSculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Judd vehemently insisted that Minimal sculpmre--mostspecifically his own--constituted a dire ction essentially different from earlier Constructivism or rectilinear abstractpainting. The difference, as he saw it, lay in his search for anabsolute unity or wholeness through repetition of denticalunits in absolute symmetry. Even Mondrian composed a

·picture by asymmetrical balance of differing co lor areas.Judd's works raise fundamental questions concerning

the nature and even the validity of the work of art, thenature of the aestl1etic experience, the nature of space,and the nature of sculptural form. Like those of mostMinimalist sculptors, Judd's works progressively expandedin scale. In 1974 Judd introduced spatial d i ~ d e r sintohis sculptures. Three years later he began to constrUctlarge-scale works in cement to be installed in the landscape,

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.

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22.49 Donald judd, Untitled 1977. Concrete, outer ring diameter 49'3 (15m), height 2'11 (0.89 m); inner ringdiameter 44'3 (13.5 m), height 2' 1 1 -6' 10 (0.89-2.1 m). Collection the Cily of Munster, Germany.

creating structures of order and harmony that resonatedwith their environment (fig. 22.49). .,,

Ronald Bladen (1918-88), a Canadian, used milnumental, architectural forms, frequently painted black, thatloom up like great barriers in the space theyoccupy (fig. 22.50). Like Tony Smith, Bladenmade his mode-ups in painted wood, since thecost of executing these vast structures n metalwould be exorbitant. Very often· Minimalist artistsenvisioning large-scale structures must awaitpatrons for the final realization of their projects.

things larger. Morris's sensitivity to the impact ofand the corresponding implications of publicness orvateness led to his pioneering work in the organizatientire rooms into a unity of sculptural mass and space.

Robert Morris (b. 1931), who dming the sixties was associated ·with Minimal sculpture, laterbecame a leader in a wide variety of sculptural,environmental, Conceptual, and Post-Minimalistforms. A student of Tony Smith, Morris, likeDonald Judd, proved to be an important advocateof Minimal art. His otes on Sculpture providedan important statement about the heritage towhich the Minimalists felt themselves h e i r - a tradltion marked by the Constructivists, the work ofDavid Smith, and the paintings of Mondr i anbut perhaps even more important, also about

the gestalt principles he believed to be crucialto Minimal sculpture. Gestalt (German for shapeor .form) theory focuses on human perception,-describing om ability to understand certain visualrelationships as shapes or units. Through hisfamiliarity with these theories, Morris posited thatone's body has a fundamental link to one's perception and experience of sculpture. According toMorris, One knows immediately what is smallerand what is larger than himself. I t is obvious, yetimportant, to take note of the fact that thingssmaller than ourselves are seen differently than

22.50 Ronald Bladen, The X 1967. Pointed wood model to bemade in metal, 22'8 X 24'6 X 12'6 (6.9 X 7.5 X 3.8 m).Fischbach Gallery, New York.

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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.-

During the sixties and seventies, the monumental size ofmuch Minimal sculpture led inevitably to the concept ofsculpture desi gned for a specific space or place. This in turnresulted in ideas such as the use of the gallery space itselfas arr element in an architectural-sculptural organization.An early experiment in this direction was Morris's 1964exhibition at the Green Gallery in New York, where large,geometric sculptural modules were integrated within theroom, whose space became an element of the total sculpture (fig. 22.51).

The idea, of course, had been anticipated by such variedsculptural environments as Schwitters's Merzbau (see fig.315) of the twenties and Yves Klein's e Vide exhibition ofthe late fifties, in which the spectators provided the sculptural accents for the empty, white-walled gallery. The implications of sculpture in place· have been explored and

expanded enormously during· the seventies and extendedto environments based on painting, Conceptualism, andEarthworks.

LeWitt Andre, and SerraSol LeWitt (b. 1928) is identified ;vith a type of serialMinimalism consisting of open, identical cubes integratedto form proportionately larger units. These cubes increasein scale until they dominate the architectural space thatcontains them (fig. 22.52). In such works, the physicalessence is only the outline of the cubes, while the cubesthemselves are e1npty space. Like Judd and MorriS, LeWitt

made important theoretical contributions to artistic ~ -

tice during the later sixties. His Paragraphs on ConceptualArt published in 1967, reiterated the discomfort o fMinimalist artists with Greenbergian standards of quality

. and set the stage for the recognition of yet another digression from the modernism endorsed by Greenberg- ---Conceptual art (see chapter 24). LeWitt's 1967 essayargued that the most important aspect of a work of art wasthe idea behind it rather than its form: The idea becomesa machine that makes the art. LeWitt's 1968 ox in the

22 52 SolleWitt, Sculpture Series A, 1967 Installationview, Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles.

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Hole put his thesis into practice. Created in theNetherlands, this work consisted of a 1nctal cube thatthe artist buried, covered over, and preserved in a seriesof recorded photographs.

Dming the early seventies, LeWitt exploited galleryspace in another way-by drawing directly on the walls.

These drawings-fi·equently destroyed at the closeof each exhibition-were generally accumulations ofrectangles, drawn vvith a ruler and pencil, toned tovarious degrees of gray, and accompanied by writtenspecifications. These specifications ensured that a givenwork could be executed by assistants in the artist sstead. Following LeWitt s conception, the internal linesof each rectangle, creating the tones, -might be diagonal as well as vertical or horizontal, and the resultwas frequently a geometric abstraction of considerablebeauty. LeWitt has continued his practice of creatingwall installations (fig. 22.53). Even if the walls are

repainted, the piece is not destroyed; it continues toexist as a well-specified idea and can be reinstalled byfollowing the artist s instructions.

The earlyworkofCar Andre (b. 1935), influencedby tl1e ideas of his friend Frank Stella and the sculptor

22.54 Carl Andre, Background, Pyramid, 1959/70wood; middle ground, Well, 1964/70 wood; foreground,Lever 1966 firebrick. Installation view. Exhibition at theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum, N e w York, 1970.


22.53 Sol leWiltWail Drawing No652, on Three W ~Continuous Formswith Color in WashSuperimposed,1990. Color-inkwash on wall,approx. 30 x 60

19.1 X 18.3 m).Shown here asinstalled temporarilyat the AddisonGallery, AndoverMassachusetts,1993. Now in theIndianapolis Museuof Art.


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22.55 Carl Andre, 7 Pieces of Work Fall 1969. Aluminum, copper, steel, lead, magnesium, and zinc, 1 296units 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 CrexCollection, Hallen fUr ne_ue Kunst, Schaffhausen, Switzerland.

Brancusi, consisted of vertical wooden sculptures, givenform by the use of a saw. By the early sixties, Andre hadmoved away from carving to the construction of sculpturesusing identical units. The arrangement of he wooden unitsin yramid (fig. 22.54 , first created in 1959 and laterreconstructed in 1970, suggests a carved form, althoughthe undulations of the surface were not created by the useof a saw.

Other pieces from the early sixties, like Well (fig.22.54 , are more literal in their arrangement. Mter 1965Andre began to make horizontally oriented sculptures,

known as floorpieces. ever (fig. 22.54 , of 1966, initiatedthis new phase in his work. These pieces were made outof rugged, industrial materials not traditionally used infine art. Combined timbers extended horizontally, bricks,styrofoam units, or identical metal squares assembled onthe floor were sculptures intended to be walked on .

Since the mid-sixties, Andre s sculpture has not beenconstructed in the studio, but rather in the exhibition spaceitself. The idea behind the pieces need only be realizedwhere they are intended for display. One of his most intricate f:loorpieces, 7 Pieces of Work was executed in 1969 onthe occasion of his solo show at the Guggenheim (fig.

22.55 . The work consisted of a combination of tiles madefrom si. x metals: aluminum, cOpper, steel, magnesium, lead,and zinc. The tiles were a foot square (30.5 em) and threequarters of an inch (19 mm thick. Each metal piece wasplaced first into a six-by-six-foot (1.8 m) square and thenused to create accompanying squares by being alternatedwith one other metal until every combination had beenachieved. The title for the piece comes frmn the thirty-sixsquare pattern the metals formed plus the square thatencompassed the whole. The work was particularly appropriate for the Guggenheim, where viewers could gaze

down on it as they ascended or descended t h ~ u s e m n sspiral ramp.

After experimenting with different materials, such assheets of vulcanized rubber, Richard Serra (b. 1939 created sculptures consisting of enormously heavy sheets ofsteel or lead that balanced against or on top of one another.Despite the various forms that Serra s work talces it consistently exploits the natural form of he material itself. Ratherthan-manipulate his 1nedia, Serra looks to their own physical properties for inspiration. His Belts for· example, talcetheir form from the simple act of hanging the rubber loopson the wall (fig. 22.56 . The incorporation of a neon tube



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into the work heightens the viewer's awareness of the intricacies of he forms the draped rubber has created. S e r ~ _ a sOne Ton Prop House of Cards) (fig. 22.57) balances ffi ur

five-hundred-pound lead sheets against one another. The

22.57 Richard Serra, ne Ton Prop House of Cords}, 1969.Lead antimony, four plates, 48 X 48 X 1 [ 122 X 122 X2.54 em). The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

5 5 CHAPTER 22 ' SIXTIES ABSTRACTION

22.56 RichardSerra, elts1966-67.

Vulcanized rubbblue neon, 1 8X 6'2';i X 1 5[5.5 X 1.9 X

0.4 m). SolomoGuggenheim Foundation, NewYork.

seemingly casual arrangement of these slabs paradoxiaccentuates their weight and communicates a sense ofgerous but exciting precariousness-heightened bytitle's reference to the ephemeral, practically weighhouse of. cards it emulates.

Serra has also been interested in a form of "scatter sture," in which series of torn lead sheets are scatteredthe floor or molten lead is splashed along the base of aThroughout the seventies and eighties, Serra progressenlarged the scale of his sculptures, took them oudoors, and combined his sheets of steel with a lands

environment, thus effecting the inevitable transitionsculpture placed in an interior environment to sculpthat becomes par t of a landscape (see fig. 24.61).

Minimalist PaintersThe senior Minimalist painter is Agnes Martin (b. 19who refined her art over many years, progressingrather traditional still lifes to Gorky-like biomorphabstractions, before arriving in the early sixties atmature distillations of pure style. This occurred inYork City, where she had moved from New Mexico, tawith her a haunting memory of the desert's powdery

and light. This she evoked by honing l tr means untilconsisted of nothing but large, square canvases griddedover with lines so delicately defined and subtly spacto suggest not austere, cerebral geometry but trembling,spiritual vibrations, what Lawrence Alloway characterizedas a veil, a shadow, a bloom" (fig. 22.58 . Declaringphysical realities and limitations yet mysteriously igible, intellectually derived but romantic in feelingeffect, the paintings of Agnes Martin are the productmind and a sensibility steeped in the meditative, hoforms of Reinhardt, Rothko, and Ne Wlllan, as well apaintings of Paul Klee and the historic landscapes


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22.58 Agnes Martin, Night Sea, 1963. Oil and gold leaf oncanvas, 6 X 6' 1.8 X 1.8 m). Private collection.

poetry of China. While using Hard-Edge structure in avisually self-dissolving or -contradicting manner, Martinhad no interest whatever in the retinal games played byOp artists. Nor did she ever aspire to the heroics of theAbstract Expressionists. When Martin felt that she had losther clarity of vision in 1967, she ceased painting and leftNew York, returning to New Mexico in 1968. After aperiod of solitude and contemplation, she resumed painting in the early seventies. Her images retained their subtle,geometric character, but her colors became even softer andmore luminous, making visible the artist's sense of life'sessence as a timeless, shadowy emanation. When I coverthe square with rectangles, she explained in 1967, itlightens the weight of the square, destroys its power.

Since the beginning of his career, obert ymanb. 1930) has been interested in ~ h o wpaint worked. His

fascination with paint extended from the way in which itwas applied to its interaction with its support and the wayin which various types of paint worked together. ln hisearliest work, Ryman explored a range of colors,- graduallygiving way to his ·exclusive use of white paint. Untitled of1962 (fig. 22.59) represents one of the last instances ofcolor in his work. Here multiple white strokes arc layeredover a background of blue and red, literally suppressing thebright hues while simultaneously reacting to them.

By the mid-sixties Ryman had dedicated himself to theuse of white, believing that this color more than any othercould highlight his manipulation of paint itself. By way ofelucidating his silent all-white paintings (fig. 22.60),Ryman said in a frequently quoted statement, It's not aquestion of what to paint but how to paint. With thesewords he declared his commitmen t to pure painting. Tomal,e has often :figured in Ryman's conversation, for heconsiders ((maldng a nutter of knowing the language ofhis materials-canvas, steel, cardboard, paper, wood, fiberglass, Mylar interacting with oil, tempera, acrylic, epoxy,enamel--and of exploiting its syntax so that his paintings

22.59 Robert Ryman, Untitled 1962. Oil on linen canvas,691 : X 69W 176.5 X 176.5 em[. Collection the ortist.

come alive with their own story. In Classico III Rymanapplied white polymer paint in an even film to twelve rectangles of handmade Classico paper precisely assembled tofoxm a larger rectangle gridded by shadows between the

'

maller units. With these positioned slightly off-center ona white groun d, thr ee types of rectangles in different scalesand relationships echo and interact with one another.ln Paramount (fig. 22.61), Ryman left the margins, theedges, of the canvas unpainted, drawing attention simultaneously to the paint and to the linen surface upon whichit rests. His atten tion to detail is such that even the metalfasteners that join the painting to the wall ~ r consid,ered

22.60 Robert Ryman, C/assico Ill 1968. Polymer on poper,7'9 X 7'5 2.4 X 2.3 m[. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

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part of the work. He takes into account the relationship ofthe painting to the wall, carefully considering the height atwhich t is hnng and the distance at which t projects for-ward. By such rigorous attention to material detail and toissues of optical perception, as well as through his painterlytouch, Ryman invests his pictures with a lyrical presence,while pursuing a stern lvlinimalist program of precision andpurification.

In his reaction against the perceived excess of AbstractExpressionism, Robert Mangold (b. 1937 , a student of

the Hard-Edge painter Al Held, stressed the factuality ofart by creating surfaces so hard, so industrially finished, andso eccentrically shaped that the object quality of the workcould not be denied. This assertion of the painting as anobject in space was emphasized in several works in whichthe artist joined canvases, drawing a ttent ion to the import-ance of edges and creating a play between the real line

22.62 Robert Mangold, Untitled 1973. Acrylic and pencilan Masonite, 24 X 24" (61 X 61 em . John Weber Gallery,New York.

5 5 6 CHAPTER 22 SIXTIES ABSTRACTION

22 61 Robert Ryman, Paramount 1Oil on linen with metal fasteners andsquare bolts, 84" X 84" 1213.4 X213.4 em . Private collection.

formed by the junction of themore) parts and the drawn line

by the artist.In paintings of the late sixties

seventies, he · used decorativeaccentuate neutral, monotone grounwhile an error in the precise, mechandrawing subverted the geometric oveshape of the canvas from within22.62 . Here, destabilized by elusive cand the imperfect internal pattern, stgent formalism gave way to spreadopenness and unpredictability, evokingoutside world of nature and human

And so Mangold too struck a balabetween impersonality and i n d i v i d

bringing a welcome warmth to the persive cool of Minimalist aesthetics.

The precocious B ·ice Mard(b. 1938) bad hardly graduated fromYale School of Art, where he too workwith A1 Held, when he created his sigture arrangement of rectangular pancombined in often symbolic orderpainted with dense monochrome fieof beeswaJ< mixed with oil (fig. 22.63).

During his career, Marden has becom


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: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.

virtuoso in his ability to balance color, surface, and shapethroughout an extended series of vari

hh arnason - sixties abstraction (ch. 22)

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