“as always with Gilliam, paint wins. Thick grounds in white or black are crazed with specks, splotches, and occasional dragged strokes of varied color. While you feel the weight of the wooden supports, your gaze loses itself in something like starry skies: dizzying impressions of infinite distance in tension with the dense grounds.”
A visual symphony of color and form, Orion stands as a stunning testament to Sam Gilliam’s pioneering contributions to the genre of painting. Deftly negotiating the boundaries between painting and sculpture, Orion epitomizes Gilliam’s highly acclaimed beveled edge canvas from the early 1970s. Painted in the same year that Sam Gilliam became the first African American artist to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, Orion was produced during a critical period of remarkable creativity and artistic innovation for the artist. Bearing exceptional provenance, the present work was acquired directly from the artist’s studio by a Private Washington D.C. area collection and patron of Sam Gilliam’s work in 1976, where it has lovingly been installed as a centerpiece of their home for nearly 50 years. As the captivating title suggests, Orion reveals a brilliant constellation of saturated hues and rich textures which unfold vividly across variating spatial planes with resplendent chromatic intensity. The midnight blue, verdant green, lilacs, vibrant yellows and oranges in Orion appear to pay homage to the recognizable constellation, scattering like stars across the canvas. A testament to its transformative presence within the history of painting, Gilliam’s work resides in permanent collections within institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; Tate Modern, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Art Institute of Chicago. Executed at the apex of his artistic practice, Orion is a paragon of Sam Gilliam’s signature beveled canvases, distinguished by its compositional complexity, the rich balance of hues, and remarkable provenance.
Right: MORRIS LOUIS, POINT OF TRANQUILITY, 1959-60. HIRSHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN, WASHINGTON D.C. © 2023 MORRIS LOUIS / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
Sam Gilliam’s institutionally acclaimed corpus of beveled edge canvases from the early 1970s are among his most renowned and influential series. Initially a part of the Washington School of Color alongside artists such as Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler and Kenneth Noland, Gilliam expanded beyond the strictures of painting by experimenting with the intersection of color and form. Gilliam began his pivotal beveled edge paintings in 1967, when he freed the canvas from its orthodox support, thus exploring form itself. His signature technique included the application of diluted acrylic to raw canvas, resulting in a soaked material which he folded and creased with his hands in a sequence of virtuosic, painterly gestures that allowed pigments to infuse into unforeseen, intensely hued compositions. Division lines and blurred borders are created through the artist’s direction, resulting in a sensual concoction of color, texture, and movement. Suspended from a wall or hung across Sam Gilliam’s studio, the canvas was then stretched onto a beveled frame, adding a compositionally complex three-dimensionality. This method is particularly visible in Orion, wherein the diluted paint set against the rich texture creates varying surface opacities that give the image its rhythmic and tidal composition. Oscillating between image and object, the canvas in Orion is particularly emphasized and projected into the three-dimensional space, creating a startling visual intensity. An early example of this series, Orion embodies the unbridled innovation that characterizes this revolutionary body of work.
“Gilliam charges the gap between the work and the wall with a distinctive energy depending on how he oriented the beveled stretcher”
“Sam Gilliam “Beveled-Edge” Paintings in Institutional Collections”
Expansive in scale and tantalizing in its beguiling complexity, Orion reveals a breathtaking skyscape eagerly awaiting exploration. Like Hermann Rorschach's famous ‘inkblot test,’ the folds in Gilliam’s canvas invite individual interpretation: the colors layer and shift, bleeding together to establish a profound abstraction. Gilliam was one of very few African American artist's associated with the budding Washington Color School in the 1970s, alongside Alma Thomas. The present work coincided with the flowering of the Washington-based Color Field painting movement. Orion deliberately resists legibility and enacts an abstraction that, especially at the time of its creation, radically subverted the figurative expectations leveled at African American artists. As curator Amele von Wedel writes, “the pure aesthetic power of Gilliam’s work perhaps belies the nerve it must have taken him to pursue abstraction” (Exh. Cat., London, Pace Gallery, Impulse: Frank Bowling, Ed Clark, Sam Gilliam, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, 2017, pp. 7-8). With a striking chromatic dynamism and exceptional handling of paint, Orion emanates the interior luminescence and vitality of the night sky. The textured and dynamic surface of the canvas evinces Gilliam’s bold new sense of kinetic freedom activated by the unprimed canvas and freedom from the traditional two-dimensional form. A mesmerizing constellation of texture and color, Orion challenges the traditional definitions of the painting. As Gilliam describes, “It is constructed painting, in that it crosses the void between object and viewer, to be part of the space in front of the picture plane. It represents an act of pure passage. The surface is no longer the final plane of the work. It is instead the beginning of an advance into the theater of life” (Sam Gilliam quoted in Annie Gawlak, “Solids and Veils,” Art Journal, no. 50, vol. 1, 1991, p. 10).
“Only when making the work can I determine the many languages that form the planes on which it is to exist. Like abstract phrases, the many intentions of the work pass through an intuitive sieve…The work was not planned, there are ploys, however, to the way it was laid out and then put together.”
Epitomizing the dynamism and lush beauty that define the apex of Sam Gilliam’s career, Orion is an exceptional example of his beveled edge paintings. By projecting the canvas into space with its beveled edge, Orion engages multiple avenues of perception, oscillating between object and image, dazzling in both the scope of its technical virtuosity and depth of feeling. Uniting painterly bravura and sculptural physicality to richly capture a starlit sky, Orion evokes an emotional poignancy that rivals the iconic abstractions of Gilliam’s Abstract Expressionist forebears. An ode to color and form itself, Orion is a triumphant materialization of Gilliam’s singular style and visual vocabulary.
