Morris Louis

Estate of the Artist (ML 2-41)
André Emmerich Gallery, Inc., New York
Marcella (Louis) Brenner, Chevy Chase, Maryland
Gift of the above in 1991

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Morris Louis Paintings, March - May 1970

Exh. Cat., Minneapolis, Dayton's 12 Gallery, Morris Louis, 1970, p. 39, illustrated
Kenworth Moffett, "Morris Louis: Omegas and Unfurleds," Artforum, 8, 1970, p. 46, illustrated in color
XXème Siècle, December 1973, p. 73
Diane Upright, Morris Louis: The Complete Paintings, A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1985, cat. no. 253, p. 156, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. Please refer to the following condition report prepared by Amann + Estabrook Conservation Associates. Framed.
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"The effect conveys a sense not only of color as somehow disembodied, and therefore more purely optical, but also of color as a thing that opens and expands the picture plane. The suppression of the difference between painted and unpainted surfaces causes pictorial space to leak through – or rather, to seem about to leak through – the framing edges of the picture into the space beyond them." Clement Greenberg (Diane Upright, Morris Louis: The Complete Paintings, A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1985, p. 20).

By the late 1950s, Color Field artist Morris Louis thrust himself into a full force exploration of pure color on an epic scale. Louis stained his canvases with horizontal lines of deeply saturated hues, creating a ladder-like spectrum of pure pigment lining either side of the raw canvas. Louis orchestrated compositions that allowed the color to flow and breathe across open expanses of the white canvas. This process of working was in great contrast to the gesture-laden and built-up surfaces that characterized Abstract Expressionist painting. Omega I is one of only five paintings from this extraordinary series dating from 1959-1960. This glorious composition exemplifies Louis' mature style.

Beginning in 1952, after meeting Kenneth Noland, Louis began exploring his own visual vernacular. Both Louis and Noland worked in Washington, D.C.; however, their close proximity to New York meant the artists were aware of the practices of their contemporaries in the neighboring city. At the same time, Louis and Noland were far enough away that they could develop their own individual creative voices. Noland introduced Louis to celebrated critic Clement Greenberg, who subsequently mentored Louis throughout his career. Greenberg opened doors by acquainting Louis with dealers and collectors, organizing exhibitions of his works, and authoring influential reviews. In 1953, Louis, Noland and Greenberg visited Helen Frankenthaler's studio. The artists were mesmerized by Frankenthaler's painting Mountains and Sea, in which eddies of pigmentation saturated the canvas creating a floating effect above the picture plane. As a result of the studio visit both painters returned to Washington D.C. and transformed their painting techniques.

Louis employed the process of using pure Magna, acrylic-resin colors applied directly onto a canvas. He worked in a vertical format and used pure colors without the presence of black pigment.  In each of the works from the Omega series, Louis utilized short, directed pours from the top of a horizontal canvas to the center. He proceeded to turn the canvas bottom-side up to release a complementary set of pours, and finally turned the canvas from horizontal to vertical to reveal the clearest unit of color, structure and gestural pours he had thus far achieved. (Klaus Kertess, Morris Louis Now An American Master Revisited, Atlanta, p. 16)

In works from the Omega series, Louis focused on the contrasting force of jagged strips of brilliant colors arranged side-by-side down the opposite edges of the composition, symmetrically facing each other as they extended into the raw canvas in the central portion of the picture plane. Using highly saturated zips of magna, he imparted an extraordinary juxtaposition between pure color and canvas. His paint saturated the linen, thus appearing to float above the two-dimensional plane.  It seems that paintings from the Omega series were conceived in a horizontal format but the artist felt the orientation was not appropriate; thus, he considered splitting the canvas in two. As a result, the vertical orientation is now considered acceptable for these works.

The Omega marks a critical departure point from the artist's Veil paintings (1958-59) and anticipates the Unfurled paintings (1960-61). It is believed that the Omega paintings date from the winter of 1959/60 or early spring of 1960. During this period Louis was exploring a format that would allow color to command the central role in his pictures. In contrast to the Veil paintings, the Omega compositions were composed of pure color creating an audacious effect in contrast without the laying of pigment and the subsequent halo affects evident in the Veils.  In the five paintings that lead to the Unfurled works, Louis wanted to present multiple tonal gradients by using pure pigment applied with seemingly straight lines of rivets of hues. Louis attempted to open out the components of the columns by pouring paint onto the canvas from the sides and from the outer limits of the top edge, so that they fit loosely together around an open center.  

Louis was profoundly influenced by the works of Abstract Expressionist, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still. Much like Newman, the zips of pigmentation Louis employed were not contrived or controlled. Rather the ribbons of color permeate the void suggested by the color field and assert a striking dynamic presence that entrances the spectator. The lines in Louis work, as in Newman's zips, signal a gesture of separation, a line drawn in the void. The transitional pictures from the Omega series also echo influences from Abstract-Expressionist, Clyfford Still. The layering and jagged irregularity of the bands of color harken the uneven mark making exemplified by Still's palate-knife work of manipulated oil pigment against the canvas. The craggily lines in Still's work appear to turn horizontal in Louis' Omega.   

Louis' explorations of pure color and light position him within an art historical trajectory that can be traced back to Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse. Louis carefully studied each color masters' works in the Phillips Collection and National Gallery in Washington D.C., where he frequently visited while living in the city. As in both Bonnard and Matisse's works, he created interior spaces that celebrated hues in their pure form, creating a luminosity that would permeate their canvases.  

Diane Upright postulated that the Omega series allowed the artist to reconcile his desire to master great draftsmanship and colorism with sacrificing structural coherence. Moreover, while these pictures were exhibited vertically, they were derived from horizontal compositions, demonstrating traces of the outer silhouette of the Veils and their exploitation of gravitational effects.  When oriented vertically, these paintings foreshadow the Unfurled.