By Any Other Name

When 22-year-old Frank Stella came to New York City in 1958 and began painting a series of austere black paintings, right in the middle of the Abstract Expressionist craze, few people knew what to make of him. But just one year removed from Princeton University, where he studied history, Stella made a splash with Die Fahne Hoch! (above, from 1959), a series of methodically painted black lines on a metal plate that ushered in the age of Minimalism. Born May 12, 1936, Stella’s star rose quickly in the art world heavens. Die Fahne Hoch! appeared at the MoMA in a 1959 exhibition of rising new artists. In 1970, Stella became the youngest artist ever to receive a retrospective at the MoMA (which The Guerilla Girls claim, in one of their many grievances against the MoMA, may have been helped by the fact that Stella’s dealer was related to a MoMA curator). While the last of the Abstract Expressionists roared, Stella very quietly became the next big thing.

Die Fahne Hoch! is a line from the Horst-Wessel-Lied, the anthem of the National Socialist German Workers Party, and translates to “the banner raised.” What black lines signified in relation to Nazism still mystifies. "What you see is what you see,” Stella later said tautologically. “Painting to me is a brush in a bucket and you put it on a surface. There is no other reality for me than that." In later, more colorful works such as Takht-i-Sulayman Variation I (from the Protractor Series; above, from 1969), Stella gets even more outlandish with his titles, taunting the viewer to tease out some narrative from narrativeless abstraction. This allusive quality makes Stella both intriguing and frustrating—there’s either something there or nothing, but nobody can say for sure. By this point in his career, Stella, a restless stylistic chameleon, had already begun to move beyond Minimalism and into Color Field abstraction.

In the late 1980s, Stella took on the great while male of American literature, Herman Melville, and his masterpiece, Moby-Dick. Enter Ahab; to him, Stubb (above, from 1988) belongs to a series of abstract painting-sculptures that take snippets of the novel as their title—in this case, one of Melville’s Shakespearean “stage directions” found throughout the tale. Many elements in the work seem to suggest something in Melville’s work (perhaps Ahab’s body can be seen in the amorphous mass rising through the center), but, again, we can’t find anything concrete to grasp other than the title itself. Abstract art, by definition, thrives through its abstract power to suggest. Many artists use the tension between specific titles and unspecific form, but few give us so little as Frank Stella to go on. ''A sculpture is just a painting cut out and stood up somewhere,’’ Stella says, inviting us to see all his art as pure medium at work, and then pulling the rug out from beneath with his titles.

Sad Times

Art critic Roberta Smith of The New York Times takes notice of the PMA’s Antonio Mancini exhibition in today’s edition. On one hand, it’s nice to see this sleeper of an exhibition get greater press, especially someplace as visible as the Times. However, the one thing that I loved the most about the catalogue to the exhibition (which I reviewed here) was that it totally resisted making the "Van Gogh angle" of the "crazy painter" the main focus. Smith makes some interesting comments, drawing parallels between Mancini and Balthus, Frank Stella, and Cy Twombly, but falls right into the same, tired storyline of the mad painter. “Yes, I am a little bit nuts,” she imagines one of his paintings saying. Perhaps Smith takes that tack to pander to popular taste, which thinks that all artists are a bit daft, but you’d hope for something a little better from the alleged paper of record. Yes, Mancini had severe emotional and mental problems. Yes, he lived a strange, tragic existence. But to insinuate, as the mad painter storyline always does, that the art is a pure, unconscious manifestation of that madness rather than a talent developed by effort expressing a particular inner life does injustice to the artist and perpetuates prejudice against the mentally ill. (Smith also veers off into a critique of some of Mancini's paintings of children, likening them to Calvin Klein ads and thus skirting the periphery of a pedophilia accusation, maybe as another component of his "madness." Personally, I believe that Mancini's depictions of children are his most striking works in their honesty and intensity. They are truly cases of an "inner child" being let out, in this case on canvas.) When Annie, Alex, and I toured the Mancini exhibition after visiting the Renoir Landscapes recently, I was simply blown away, even after being somewhat prepared by seeing the works in reproduction first. Annie couldn’t believe how someone that good could remain unknown. The PMA’s exhibition hopes to create an atmosphere in which Mancini the artist can be rediscovered by a modern audience. Roberta Smith’s piece on Mancini the madman simply covers him up again.

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.]

Game and Match

I remember reading in Calvin Tomkins’ Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Art World of Our Time about Robert Rauschenberg’s performance piece Open Score from 1966, where art and technology met in the strangest tennis game ever (above). Of course, reading about that performance was a poor substitute for actually being there that night. Microcinema International now offers a better alternative in their new DVD Open Score by Robert Rauschenberg, which offers archival footage and a great documentary to transport you back to that unique moment in art history.

In 1966, Rauschenberg joined forces with a group of engineers and scientists at Bell Telephone Laboratories to help realize some of his more unusual concepts for performance art. When Rauschenberg wanted to create a bizarre game of tennis featuring resounding booms, they hollowed out the handles of tennis rackets and inserted transmitters that would broadcast the ball hitting the strings of the rackets. Rauschenberg then asked that each strike of the ball be matched with a light going out, until the players were in total darkness. After the engineers and scientists had solved that problem, Rauschenberg arranged for a performance at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, historic site of the 1913 Armory show that introduced modern art to America.

“They [the engineers and scientists] were working for nothing. We [the artists] were working for nothing. What a way to run a business!” Rauschenberg recalls in the documentary accompanying the performance film. The project ran on pure enthusiasm for technology and art. Some claim that Open Score marked the first time artists truly used technology in art, perhaps opening the door for the ever-increasing interchange continuing today. Watching the scientists recall the now-crude solutions to the problems they faced, you still get a sense of the excitement they felt back then.

The footage of the actual tennis game is surprisingly good, considering the state of video at the time. Fellow artist Frank Stella and the tennis pro from his club gamely rally on as the "booms" surround them and the lights soon go completely out. Once those lights go completely dark and the game becomes impossible, Rauschenberg introduces act two, in which 500 people come on stage in total darkness and perform tasks such as taking off their jackets, walking around, and hugging any others they bump in to. Meanwhile, using infrared cameras, Rauschenberg projects their actions upon screens suspended above the crowd. The infrared cameras transform all of the figures into eerie Nordic types. As they move around in the darkness, a voice reads names slowly over the public address system. This part of the performance struck me as especially haunting from the perspective of 2007, where we associate the readings of names in such a fashion with tragedies such as 9/11. Hearing the names read and seeing the ghostly figures milling about, I imagined for a moment that they were the spirits of the 9/11 attacks in some form of the afterlife, ferried over to the other side. The performance ends with Rauschenberg himself carrying a woman placed in a bag from place to place as she sings over the loudspeakers, another haunting image that must have been even more stirring in person than it was 40 years later in a grainy video.

“It couldn’t be done today,” Rauschenberg laments in the documentary. “It was done before its time. And it’s too late now.” Sadly, Rauschenberg is right. Open Score stands as a work without a time or place, questioning the very concepts of time, place, and identity. Fortunately, this video allows us to experience Rauschenberg’s unique perspective and to enjoy the first awkward stab at the marriage of technology and art that flourishes today in contemporary art.

[Many thanks to Microcinema International for providing me with a review copy of this DVD.]