Two Curves

In his later career, Ellsworth Kelly distilled his practice down to its most potent elements. Marrying hard edges and flat colors with amorphous organic forms, canvases like Two Curves belie their seemingly simple compositions by hosting a plethora of artistic innovations. Painted in 2004, this arresting example is an exquisite illustration of both Kelly’s technical prowess and his innate ability to coax movement and dynamism out of flat forms. Playing with our experience of the physical world, the artist reassesses the visual and reinterprets his surroundings into boldly original compositions. As historian Simon Schama asserted, Kelly’s works come from “perceptual serendipity—in a shadow, a reflection, a partly obscured object or shape—from which he then shears away a visual fragment” (S. Schama cited in R. Cooke, “Ellsworth Kelly: ‘I want to live another 15 years,’” The Guardian, November 8, 2015). Extracting formal purity from the chaos of observation the present example typifies Kelly’s innate ability to infuse simple materials with the richness of everyday existence.

Delicately rendered on an expertly shaped canvas, Two Curves is a masterclass in refined supports and subtle forms. Its surface is flat and unflinching; there is no trace of the brush and the blazing red sears itself into the viewer’s eyeline. This bold application of color harmoniously melds the collection of straight and curvilinear forms within the work that would otherwise fight for control. Billowing out like a cartoon cloud, the rounded double contour on the right extends from the flat edge on the upper left which anchors the entire affair. Hanging from this exacting line, the whole work seems to catch the air as the slightest crevice creates a dimple between two bulges like a pinned piece of fabric in the wind. Covered in myriad coats of pigment to remove any trace of the artist’s hand, works like the present example are a testament to the exacting nature of Kelly’s practice. Esteemed critic Roberta Smith noted, “The results are not so much paintings as crisp, flat objects devoid of spatial illusion. Yet the best of them are so perfectly made that we tend to forget about their physical nature, concentrating solely on their visual effects instead. Their perfection creates an aura of eternal newness that can sometimes seem antiseptic but just as often is central to their power” (R. Smith, “At Ninety, Still Riveting the Mind’s Eye,” New York Times, June 3, 2013). Just like Frank Stella’s pioneering shaped canvases from the early 1960s, the surface of Two Curves is devoid of painterly emotion and the edges are razor sharp. Yet, in contrast to Stella’s harsh angles, Kelly’s aptitude for compositional balance and captivating forms allows Two Curves to invite us inward to explore its subtle intricacies.

Within the artist’s larger oeuvre, Two Curves occupies a liminal space between two and three dimensions. The perfect border of its curvilinear canvas punches through with the immediacy of cut paper or thin steel but retains a bodily heft that exists fully within some of his more sculptural forays. This knack for creating works that are simultaneously part of our world and detached from the weight of daily existence has been readily exhibited throughout Kelly’s storied career. Even as early as 1959, when his early geometric abstractions were first starting to be shown to larger audiences, critic Eugene C. Goossen noted their “hard, crisp edges [that] commanded the eye to feel them as the hand would feel soft flesh” (E. C. Goossen in Sixteen Americans, exh. cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1959, p. 31). Indeed it is this perplexing dichotomy of cool, graphic immediacy and material warmth that has made Kelly’s oeuvre so attractive. Examples such as Two Curves continue this trajectory as the work pulls the viewer in to fully investigate the pristine surface and its curvaceous edges as not just a picture but as a dynamic object.