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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the Sam Francis Estate under no. SF57-285.
Untitled was executed in 1957, the year Sam Francis, by then a well-known and respected artist, travelled to Japan. His reception there reflected the new-found strength of his works, and indeed during his time there he executed his first ever commission, a mural. The implications of the scale of mural works were relatively new to him, but were to prove immediately visible in his work which, even on a relatively small scale, began to explore a new monumentality.
However, the greatest influence on Francis was Japan itself. The Japanese use of unpainted space as an integral part of the artwork had an immediate impact on his work, which embraced these spaces, eschewing the dense concentration of colour he had formerly favoured. Even the Japanese media and techniques, traditional in their native land but novel to the American, enabled him to explore new forms of painting. The purple dominating the centre of Untitled is imbued with visual potency by the contrasting space around it, the drips all the more striking against the off-white background. This awareness of space makes the viewer notice the actual application of ink, putting the artistic process itself to the fore - the act of painting is itself celebrated in this painting. At the same time, the drips, highlighted by Francis' use of space, bring attention to the almost anti-painting techniques the artist has employed in this work.
Francis had, since his first visit to the Orangerie in Paris, been intensely interested in the scale and treatment of light in Monet's works. Monet himself was also influenced by Japanese art. It was therefore hardly surprising that the ancient Japanese masters would find such a willing new disciple in the abstract artist. However, the use to which Francis put this inspiration and influence was completely different. Through Japanese art, Francis found a tradition and a technique that allowed him to perfect his abstract artistic idiom.
Untitled was executed in 1957, the year Sam Francis, by then a well-known and respected artist, travelled to Japan. His reception there reflected the new-found strength of his works, and indeed during his time there he executed his first ever commission, a mural. The implications of the scale of mural works were relatively new to him, but were to prove immediately visible in his work which, even on a relatively small scale, began to explore a new monumentality.
However, the greatest influence on Francis was Japan itself. The Japanese use of unpainted space as an integral part of the artwork had an immediate impact on his work, which embraced these spaces, eschewing the dense concentration of colour he had formerly favoured. Even the Japanese media and techniques, traditional in their native land but novel to the American, enabled him to explore new forms of painting. The purple dominating the centre of Untitled is imbued with visual potency by the contrasting space around it, the drips all the more striking against the off-white background. This awareness of space makes the viewer notice the actual application of ink, putting the artistic process itself to the fore - the act of painting is itself celebrated in this painting. At the same time, the drips, highlighted by Francis' use of space, bring attention to the almost anti-painting techniques the artist has employed in this work.
Francis had, since his first visit to the Orangerie in Paris, been intensely interested in the scale and treatment of light in Monet's works. Monet himself was also influenced by Japanese art. It was therefore hardly surprising that the ancient Japanese masters would find such a willing new disciple in the abstract artist. However, the use to which Francis put this inspiration and influence was completely different. Through Japanese art, Francis found a tradition and a technique that allowed him to perfect his abstract artistic idiom.