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Lot Essay
“I am not interested in painting as it has been accepted for so long - to hang on walls of houses as pictures. To hell with pictures—they should be the wall” - Ellsworth Kelly
Employing a singular approach to painting and sculpture, Ellsworth Kelly investigates the liminal spaces that exist in art between edges, colors, shapes, and the viewers themselves. In 1950, he exclaimed in a letter to his friend the musician John Cage, “I am not interested in painting as it has been accepted for so long—to hang on walls of houses as pictures. To hell with pictures—they should be the wall" (E. Kelly, Letter to John Cage, September 4, 1950). This formative idea is in its most elemental state in Palm Relief, as Kelly shapes raw materials into an evocative autonomous object. One of his earliest wall sculptures, the present work exists somewhere between the everyday and a rarified space for objects beyond our immediate understanding. In so doing, it perplexingly holds the viewer at bay while inviting them in with warm familiarity. Furthermore, the conjoined surfaces set the stage for the artist’s later work with shaped canvases and three-dimensional construction.
Rendered with planes of solid oak, Palm Relief is a touchstone for Kelly’s lifelong infusion of observed forms and organic shapes into his decidedly abstract oeuvre. Though at first it may seem to take the shape of a traditional canvas in its rectilinear composition, this wooden relief treads the line between two-dimensional wall works and sculptural forays into the third dimension. Set against a vertical rectangle, an angular piece of wood rises slightly off the wall and into our space. The top and sides are flush with the base panel, but the bottom hovers slightly and gives the entire construction a more buoyant characteristic. Diagonals cut into this frontal component push it into a semi-organic realm, but Kelly’s composition remains nonrepresentational. Often looking to nature and architecture for inspiration, the artist flirted with found shapes in his work but never committed fully to figuration. Still, some part of the source material always seems to linger in works like the present example that instills otherwise cold geometry with an earthy, human quality.
Born in New York, Kelly studied at Pratt Institute before being drafted into World War Two. After the war, he continued his studies in Boston before venturing back to Paris with the help of the G.I. Bill. There, he became entrenched with the Surrealists and other avant-garde visionaries like John Cage, Jean Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Joan Miró. This lively cadre of artists and creative individuals inspired the young Kelly to venture beyond the figuration and traditional elements he had learned in art school as he sought to more fully experience his surroundings and translate them into a new visual practice. Barbara Rose, writing for Artforum in 1967, explained, “Living in Paris after the War, Kelly became familiar with [Jean] Arp’s raised wooden reliefs; these surely exerted an influence on him, as did Miró’s irregular biomorphic shapes. This interest in the freely created shapes of Miró and Arp, plus his distinctively American sensibility, insured Kelly’s autonomy from any overly restrictive interpretation of geometry” (B. Rose, “The Sculpture of Ellsworth Kelly,” Artforum, Summer 1967, p. 55). Rather than anchoring himself in anything overly mathematical, Kelly’s compositions are rife with natural shapes and forms found in the urban environment which he then expertly pared down to their most potent and rudimentary existence.
Upon returning to New York in 1954, Kelly moved into a building where artists such as Agnes Martin and James Rosenquist also lived and worked. Beginning to coalesce his European experiences with new thoughts about art beyond the dominant mode of Abstract Expressionism, he created wooden constructions like Palm Relief. Not beholden to any one artistic style, these investigations allowed him to play with abstraction in a new way. Thinking back to the carved reliefs he viewed in cathedrals and on the city streets of Paris, as well as the striking shadows of twentieth-century French architecture, Kelly combined historical modes with a Modern sensibility. Fitting together these flat surfaces and simple, yet evocative forms would go on to inform his revolutionary shaped canvases and hard-edged compositions in the following years. Works like Palm Relief are a rare peek into the formative processes that preceded Kelly’s legendary career.
Employing a singular approach to painting and sculpture, Ellsworth Kelly investigates the liminal spaces that exist in art between edges, colors, shapes, and the viewers themselves. In 1950, he exclaimed in a letter to his friend the musician John Cage, “I am not interested in painting as it has been accepted for so long—to hang on walls of houses as pictures. To hell with pictures—they should be the wall" (E. Kelly, Letter to John Cage, September 4, 1950). This formative idea is in its most elemental state in Palm Relief, as Kelly shapes raw materials into an evocative autonomous object. One of his earliest wall sculptures, the present work exists somewhere between the everyday and a rarified space for objects beyond our immediate understanding. In so doing, it perplexingly holds the viewer at bay while inviting them in with warm familiarity. Furthermore, the conjoined surfaces set the stage for the artist’s later work with shaped canvases and three-dimensional construction.
Rendered with planes of solid oak, Palm Relief is a touchstone for Kelly’s lifelong infusion of observed forms and organic shapes into his decidedly abstract oeuvre. Though at first it may seem to take the shape of a traditional canvas in its rectilinear composition, this wooden relief treads the line between two-dimensional wall works and sculptural forays into the third dimension. Set against a vertical rectangle, an angular piece of wood rises slightly off the wall and into our space. The top and sides are flush with the base panel, but the bottom hovers slightly and gives the entire construction a more buoyant characteristic. Diagonals cut into this frontal component push it into a semi-organic realm, but Kelly’s composition remains nonrepresentational. Often looking to nature and architecture for inspiration, the artist flirted with found shapes in his work but never committed fully to figuration. Still, some part of the source material always seems to linger in works like the present example that instills otherwise cold geometry with an earthy, human quality.
Born in New York, Kelly studied at Pratt Institute before being drafted into World War Two. After the war, he continued his studies in Boston before venturing back to Paris with the help of the G.I. Bill. There, he became entrenched with the Surrealists and other avant-garde visionaries like John Cage, Jean Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Joan Miró. This lively cadre of artists and creative individuals inspired the young Kelly to venture beyond the figuration and traditional elements he had learned in art school as he sought to more fully experience his surroundings and translate them into a new visual practice. Barbara Rose, writing for Artforum in 1967, explained, “Living in Paris after the War, Kelly became familiar with [Jean] Arp’s raised wooden reliefs; these surely exerted an influence on him, as did Miró’s irregular biomorphic shapes. This interest in the freely created shapes of Miró and Arp, plus his distinctively American sensibility, insured Kelly’s autonomy from any overly restrictive interpretation of geometry” (B. Rose, “The Sculpture of Ellsworth Kelly,” Artforum, Summer 1967, p. 55). Rather than anchoring himself in anything overly mathematical, Kelly’s compositions are rife with natural shapes and forms found in the urban environment which he then expertly pared down to their most potent and rudimentary existence.
Upon returning to New York in 1954, Kelly moved into a building where artists such as Agnes Martin and James Rosenquist also lived and worked. Beginning to coalesce his European experiences with new thoughts about art beyond the dominant mode of Abstract Expressionism, he created wooden constructions like Palm Relief. Not beholden to any one artistic style, these investigations allowed him to play with abstraction in a new way. Thinking back to the carved reliefs he viewed in cathedrals and on the city streets of Paris, as well as the striking shadows of twentieth-century French architecture, Kelly combined historical modes with a Modern sensibility. Fitting together these flat surfaces and simple, yet evocative forms would go on to inform his revolutionary shaped canvases and hard-edged compositions in the following years. Works like Palm Relief are a rare peek into the formative processes that preceded Kelly’s legendary career.