Target Practice

The American art scene lost one of the great, yet forgotten artists of the twentieth century last Tuesday with the passing of Kenneth Noland at 85 years of age. One of the Color Field painters, the abstract art movement christened by influential critic Clement Greenberg as the true successor to the Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Noland enjoyed his greatest success in the late 1950s and early 1960s, only to become collateral damage when Greenberg tumbled from the apex of the critical world and he and the rest of the Color Field painters became targets, too. (Noland's ") Please venture over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Target Practice."

Correspondence Course

One of the reasons that modern art has left much of the public behind is the sheer weight of the theorizing that has gone into so many movements. The importance of a blank canvas buttressed by a manifesto leaves even some interested parties bewildered. What, then, should we make of the theory-less theorist—William Baziotes. Born June 11, 1912, Baziotes painted in a Surrealist style and frequented Abstract Expressionist circles with Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, but he resisted easy categorization. In 1947 he confessed his theoretical agnosticism in an essay titled, “I Can’t Evolve Any Concrete Theory,” a shocking admission in an age when Clement Greenberg and others wrung theoretical juice from everything at hand. Baziotes takes his cue from French Symbolist poets such as Charles Baudelaire. Yet, unlike other artists, such as Gustav Klimt or Edvard Munch, Baziotes leaves easily recognizable forms such as the human body behind. Instead, Baziotes subscribes to Baudelaire’s idea of “correspondences” in which all natural things are equal to the point that anything can symbolize a vast number of things. Baudelaire writes in the poem “Correspondences,” “Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance/ In a deep and tenebrous unity, / Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day, / Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond.” Baziotes translates Baudelaire’s mystic ideas into paint in works such as The Flesh Eaters (above, from 1952), in which biomorphic forms that look natural but resist identification interact to generate a narrative built by each viewer from the depths of their own imagination. The Flesh Eaters of the title can be cannibals, Polyphemus the cyclops eating Odysseus’ crew, or a larger metaphor for humanity’s self-consuming desires run amok. The possibilities, like nature, are endless.

Baziotes worked extremely slowly, completing only one or two works during his prime years in the 1950s. While Jackson Pollock stepped on the gas and dripped his way to fame and infamy, Baziotes applied the brakes, quietly mediating over his works before allowing himself to begin the act of painting itself. "I want my pictures to take effect very slowly,” Baziotes claimed, “to obsess and haunt." Baziotes’ Dusk (above, from 1958) haunts through its elusiveness. The dusky pink shape and trailing ribbons of green, blue, and white are all that interrupt the pensive grey background. While teaching and painting in New York City, Baziotes frequented the Greek sculpture and pottery collections. Of Greek descent himself, Baziotes may have identified with the classical forms on multiple levels. The lines in Dusk resemble on one level the cracks in ancient vases they wear like the proud scars of millennia. Longing to replicate the eternalness of nature itself, Baziotes evokes the next best thing in terms of human creativity—the oldest and most lasting forms remaining. In many ways, Baziotes’ Dusk is his version of Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn. Both conclude that "’Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ —that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

As with the work of Robert Motherwell, I see a lot of Zen in Baziotes’ painting. In the same vein, I also sense a lot of Jung in Baziotes’ approach. In works such as Aquatic (above, from 1961), Baziotes looks to tap into what Jung called “the collective unconscious.” Again, the forms look like something we’ve seen in reality but Baziotes’ skews them just enough to make them seem dreamlike. In Aquatic, Baziotes becomes an artist of the floating world, riding the currents of his unconscious with the faith that his audience will meet him on the same high seas. As with the connection to ancient sculpture in Dusk, Aquatic connects back to the primordial sea, the source of all life on Earth. Baziotes titled this work to make the sea link clear, but I think the imagery itself would eventually lead most onlookers to that watery source. I began with the idea that Baziotes was theory-free and then proceeded to drop the names of Baudelaire and Jung to impose theory on him once again, whether Baziotes wanted to or not. Strip away all these ideas and even the titles of the works, however, and you still find yourself drawn to them as if called by something instinctual. It’s unfortunate that Baziotes’ art is often swamped by the bigger names of American art in the 1950s, but the intentional timelessness of his works gives them a “patience” that still may one day be rewarded.

Abstract Thinking

Few people could explain abstract expressionist art to the masses like Robert Motherwell, the youngest of the group of titans that included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko. Born January 24, 1915, Motherwell believed that “the public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.” Motherwell saw the excesses of abstract expressionism as a positive rather than a negative. "Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come into existence, save as the consequence to a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need," he wrote. Works such as The Little Spanish Prison (above, from 1941-44) tried to quench that burning need Motherwell identified in modern society. "Abstract expressionism was the first American art that was filled with anger as well as beauty," he later said, encapsulating neatly his desire to transform the anger welling up inside his artistic soul into something beautiful and communicative.

"Every intelligent painter carries the whole culture of modern painting in his head. It is the real subject, of which everything he paints is both an homage and a critique, and everything he says is a gloss," Motherwell stated, and later emphasized in such works as Fishes with Red Stripe (above, from 1954), which recalls the calligraphy of Japanese art as well as the abstracted figurative work of Matisse and Picasso. Although Motherwell talked about the anger of abstract expressionism, he saw a playfulness in it as well. “Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it,” he once said, contrasting with such “art to the death” figures as Pollock. Motherwell married fellow artist He was married to artist Helen Frankenthaler, making them the “Brangelina” of the Color Field school of painting for a time. Such an engagement with life, rather than death, makes Motherwell one of the most appealing of the abstract expressionists.

Motherwell’s art takes a darker turn in his series of works titled Elegy to the Spanish Republic (No. 110, from 1971, appears above). Motherwell examined that political situation through the stark contrast of black and white, a shift that Pollock also made in his later works and Barnett Newman did to moving effect in his Stations of the Cross. Although his personal life wasn’t tempestuous enough to warrant a biopic, like Pollock, Motherwell helped further abstract art in America much more by living than by dying.

The Birth of the Cool

Number 18, 1951, by Mark Rothko. Oil on canvas; 81-1/2 x 69-7/8 in. Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Museum of Art, Utica, NY (53.216) ©2006 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the American Federation of Arts.

“The history of art is messier and more haphazard than most theories allow,” writes Karen Wilkin in the catalogue to the exhibition Color as Field: American Painting 1950-1975 currently at the Denver Art Museum. Beginning with Heinrich Wolfflin’s concept of the history of art as a pendulum swing between linear (i.e., precise and clean) and painterly (i.e., full of individual gesture) and then moving on to Clement Greenberg’s modern appropriation of that dichotomy in his appreciation of the Abstract Expressionists, Wilkin sets the stage for the generation after Pollock, de Kooning, and Rothko–the Color Field painters. “Their art can be read as departing from the possibilities suggested by Rothko’s poised rectangles,” Wilkin writes, such as Rothko’s Number 18 (above). Yet, as Wilkin quickly shows, the relationship between the Color Field painters and their Abstract Expressionist “ancestors” as well as between themselves made for a “messier” story than their calm, cool paintings reveal.



Yellow Hymn, 1954, by Hans Hofmann. Oil on canvas; 50 x 40 in. The Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust; courtesy Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, New York. © 2006 Estate of Hans Hofmann / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the American Federation of Arts.

Wilkin sees two factors defining what Color Field painting is. One is the idea of “cool,” “in Marshall McLuhan’s sense of the word,” Wilkin adds. McLuhan defined “hot” media as those works that “reach out” and grab you, whereas “cool” media require the individual to take the first step. The frenzy of the Abstract Expressionists heated up the art world in a way that the Color Field painters wanted to cool down. When the Color Field painters looked for inspiration among the Abstract Expressionists, Rothko obviously provided a model, but the lesser-known Hans Hofmann offered a different take on how an economy of means could be full of possibilities. Hofmann’s Yellow Hymn (above), with its organization and “push and pull” of warm and cool colors projecting from and receding into the surface, opened up possibilities that some of the better-known Abstract Expressionists couldn’t. “You could become a de Kooning disciple or satellite or mirror, but you could depart from Pollock,” Helen Frankenthaler said in a similar vein, rejecting the claustrophobically overpowering gestures of de Kooning for the freer, all-over effect of Pollock’s drip paintings. Matisse stands as another teacher for the Color Field artists, demonstrating how to build pictures with powerful, unmodulated blocks of color, adding to Hofmann’s lessons.

The second factor linking the Color Field school is the person of Clement Greenberg, who co-curated the Post Painterly Abstraction exhibition that first gathered these diverse artists together, allowing him almost single-handedly to define the terms of the movement and who and who wasn’t included. The power of Greenberg, the earliest critical champion of Pollock, seems almost impossible today, but was all too true in the 1950s and 1960s art world.

Flood, 1967, by Helen Frankenthaler. Synthetic polymer on canvas; 124 x 140 in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art (68.12). Photograph Geoffrey Clements. © 2007 Helen Frankenthaler. Courtesy of the American Federation of Arts.

Helen Frankenthaler emerges as one of the central figures of the Color Field movement. “Frankenthaler’s multivalent images seem to distill the large phenomena of the natural world—sea and sky, night and day, and changing weather—into subtle, richly modulated relationships of hue,” Wilkin writes. Works such as Frankenthaler’s Flood (above) mimic nature’s power yet remain true to the tenets of abstraction. Sadly, as Carl Belz recalls in his short essay in the catalogue, Frankenthaler’s approach to Color Field painting soon received the criticism of being “too soft” by critics such as Harold Rosenberg, Greenberg fierce rival. “Too soft,” of course, served as code for “woman painter,” a standard putdown for female artists. Flipping through the biographies of the Color Field painters by Hrag Vartanian at the end of the catalogue and looking at the artists’ photographs, you quickly realize that Frankenthaler was the lone intruder in the all-men’s club. To think that she found her point of departure in the art of the macho Pollock, you realize just how innovative and individual Frankenthaler’s art truly is.

Floral V, 1959-60, by Morris Louis. Acrylic and magna on canvas; 98-3/8 x 137-13/16 in. Private collection, Denver. 1993 Marcella Louis Brenner. Courtesy of the American Federation of Arts.

Wilkin compares the effect of innovations in acrylic paint on the Color Field school to the effect of the advent of prepared oil paint on the Impressionists. Tubes of paint freed the Impressionists to venture forth into nature and paint in the open. Quick drying, brilliantly colored acrylic paint similarly freed the Color Field painters to try new effects, such as Morris Louis did in his Floral V (above) and other multilayered works. “It is impossible to determine which came first: the painters’ desire to cover large surfaces with thin, saturated, even handed color or the existence of paint that made this possible,” Wilkin writes. This chicken-egg conundrum lies at the heart of the Color Field movement, providing an early example of modern artists exploiting new materials and technology in pursuit of new effects.

Moultonville II, 1966, by Frank Stella. Fluorescent alkyd and epoxy paint on canvas; 124 x 86 in. Collection Mr. and Mrs. David Mirvish, Toronto. Photograph Sean Weaver. © 2006 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the American Federation of Arts.


Color Field painting today suffers from a inferiority complex, something that this exhibition should rectify. As Wilkin points out, although Color Field art shares much with their contemporary movements of Minimalism and Pop Art in terms of striving towards economy and anonymity of touch, Color Field art gets labeled as “decorative” or, even worse, “corporate” for lacking any overt political content even during such turbulent times as the 1960s in America. Belz captures some of the flavor of this pecking order and its injustice in comparing Frank Stella’s shift from Minimalism to Color Field in works such as Moultonville II (above) to Bob Dylan’s infamous choice to go electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966. “As each radicalized his art and deepened it by taking inspiration from his art’s past and extending it into the present,” Belz writes, “each revealed the past in a fresh light. In doing so, each took me along to places that were at once familiar and new.” Using the example of Stella’s transition, Belz finds the essence of Color Field’s attraction, namely its ability to be both conservative by taking the best of the past and radical in extending that forward, thus providing a “model for lived experience” itself.

Chi Ama, Crede, 1962, by Robert Motherwell. Oil on canvas; 82 x 141 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; purchased by The Phillips Collection through funds donated by The Judith Rothschild Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Gifford Phillips, The Chisholm Foundation, The Whitehead Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin Phillips, Mr. and Mrs. Marc E. Leland, and the Honorable Ann Winkelman Brown and Donald Brown, 1998. Photograph Steven Sloman. Art © Dedalus Foundation, Inc./Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Courtesy of the American Federation of Arts.

Perhaps more than any other modern art movement, Color Field art is a creation of art critics, for good and ill. Michael Fried’s “combination of intellectual rigor and passion for every aspect of works of art,” Wilkin writes, “quickly set a standard for illuminating formalist criticism” as he promoted works such as Robert Motherwell’s Chi Ama, Crede (above). Unfortunately, the bald pate of Clement Greenberg continues to rule over the Color Field world, for better or worse. “Even today,” Wilkin laments, “a decade after his death, the personal animosities aroused by this difficult, thorny man can seem to get in the way of objective judgment of his achievement, and by extension, to obscure the excellences of the art with which he was most closely associated.” Fortunately, Color as Field: American Painting 1950-1975 exorcises the ghost of Greenberg, lifting the label of pure decoration to reveal the creative thinking and even radicalism of the artists and their works. In curating and writing Color as Field, Karen Wilkin allows the Color Field school to step out of the long shadow of Clement Greenberg and show their true colors.

[Many thanks to the Denver Art Museum for providing me with a copy of the exhibition catalogue to Color as Field: American Painting 1950-1975 and for the images from the exhibition.]

Painting Music

A new release by An Die Musik quartet titled The Painter’s Music/The Musician’s Art features artwork by modern artists Helen Frankenthaler, David Hockney, Robert Motherwell, and Kenneth Noland. Each artist also responds to questions about what kind of music they like and dislike. Standard classical chamber works by Beethoven, Mozart, Shubert, and Schumann appear on the CD. (Helen Frankenthaler’s Nature Abhors a Vacuum is above.)

The relationship between music and visual art interests me almost as much, but in a different way than the relationship between literature (especially poetry) and visual art. I almost find the music-painting link more interesting simply because of the nonverbal nature of the interplay. As Frank Zappa has been credited with saying, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” You just can’t put either into words in a completely satisfying way. If you could, they would cease to be an image or music. It’s this shared ineffable aspect of music and art that brings the two so close in my mind.

One of the more interesting musicians who painted is jazz great Miles Davis. (One of his original works is above.) Davis’ mind explored so many aspects of music and African-American culture that it was inevitable that he would delve into the visual arts with an Afrocentric flair, yet he brings a modernist, abstract touch to it absorbed through his contact with the abstract art movements that dominated American culture in the 1950s and 60s. I’m not arguing that Davis’ work is museum quality, but I find it interesting as an example of this interplay of music and art.

I couldn’t imagine living without both!