Kenneth Noland

Park International, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above on May 16, 1964 for $3,000

In the 1950s, Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis both worked in the relative isolation of Washington, D. C., where they met and became friends. Clement Greenberg, the critic and soon-to-be champion of Color Field Painting, introduced them to Helen Frankenthaler and together they visited her studio in the spring of 1953. Seeing Frankenthaler’s Mountains and Sea (1952), they realized that here, in Morris Louis’ words, was ``a bridge between Pollock and what was possible.’’ Their subsequent exploration and experimentation with the method of staining on unsized canvas soon led to Louis’ Veil paintings and Noland’s Circle paintings. Tragically, Louis died in September 1962, just as his work was on the cusp of international recognition, marked by the celebration of his work in a major exhibition of seventeen of his largest paintings at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1963. Kenneth Noland’s art achieved recognition at a parallel pace. Clement Greenberg published his now famous article ``Louis and Noland’’ in Art International May 1960, which proved to be a crucial step towards widespread recognition. In the essay, Greenberg stated his belief that Noland and Louis were the only new artists to achieve major status on the level of the best of the first wave of Abstract Expressionists.  In a seminal text on Noland, William C. Agee, writing in 1993 about the Circle paintings of the late 1950s and early 1960s, noted that the ``resolution of these paintings, their clarity and articulation, is such that they mark a high moment in the history of modern painting… The paintings, with evocative titles such as Heat, Plunge, and Beginning, were filled with intense color that seemed to radiate from a format of rough concentric circles. Their impact was dramatic… Today, these paintings are as fresh and powerful as they were when they were first exhibited… They are surely a high moment in post-1945 art and their historical importance and level of accomplishment are such that they compel us to look closely at them once again.’’ (Exh. Cat., Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Kenneth Noland: the Circle Paintings, 1956-1963, 1993)

While at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the late 1940s, Noland was a member of the first generation of American art students to be steeped in the realm of non-objective art.  In this tradition, the artist begins not with visible reality or by abstracting from visible reality but by a study of the elements of art – line, volume, form, color – conceived of abstractly. Noland was particularly influenced by the geometric abstractions and bright chromatic compositions of his teacher, Ilya Bolotowsky; however by the end of his stay at Black Mountain College, Noland had already begun to move away from the hard-edged and polished geometrical abstraction toward a more `expressionistic’ alternative as signified by Paul Klee. At this stage, Noland responded to a more intuitive and spontaneous approach to the materials of painting, an attitude that responded fully to the Action Painters and Abstract Expressionists that came to prominence in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Yet, Noland sought to find his own unique style of expression and did not want to merely mirror the vigorous brushstrokes and impastoed surfaces of Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline or Willem de Kooning. At this critical juncture, the artist made his seminal visit to Frankenthaler’s studio, where the young artist was staining thinned pigment directly onto large, unprimed expanses of canvas. In Noland’s words, ``[Pollock] was too personal. But Frankenthaler showed us a way - a way to think about and use color.’’ (Kenworth Moffet, Kenneth Noland, New York 1977, p. 22)  Another influence was David Smith, whom Noland met in 1950, and who first discussed with Noland the advantages of working in series as a way to investigate aesthetic principles and working methods. Setting artistic parameters would leave the artist free to take risks and to push toward new innovations in one area while not being concerned with artistic choices in every area.

In the Circle paintings, often also referred to as Targets, Noland established his most famous series of works, a motif that he would return to in later paintings as well. Giving primacy to color, Noland flattened his composition to the picture plane, eschewing the traditional illusionism of easel painting with as much force as Robert Delaunay, the modernist painter who first focused on adapting the Cubist style to serve color. Both artists often chose the circle as the organizing principle of their compositions, and within this framework, Noland was able to experiment with concentric chromatic balance and juxtaposition between the varied circular components. By staining the pigment directly onto raw duck cotton canvas, Noland allowed the color to intimately unite with the surface in a direct purity. Circle paintings such as Sunwise, seem to bloom forth from the canvas, pulsating with light as the cool and warm tones play against each other – in this case, the warm orange center vies with the cool teal blue band of Sunwise. Noland further activates the surface with the swirl of drips on the outer circle, implying motion within the flattened static space.