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拍品专文
A symphony of diaphanous colors spread across a monumental canvas, Morris Louis’s Plenitude stands as a testament to the artist’s unique mastery of light and color. The thoroughly layered composition of poured paint forces its onlookers to intensify and slow their gaze as they move throughout the engulfing landscape of color. The painting invites its viewers on a pictorial quest, scanning for clues around the perimeter and searching throughout the rich gradients for hints of the unique chromatic ingredients which have been molded together to produce the majestic veil. Plenitude was included in what was the first presentation of its scale concerned exclusively with the Veil paintings from the 1950s, positioning this work as one of the most remarkable from the series.
"Louis translates the chromatic calculations of Rothko into something that might be called chromatic mysticism." - Stuart Preston
As one of the leading figures in the Color Field movement, Louis’s Veil paintings occupy a pivotal place in twentieth century art, establishing the critical link between Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. In these works, the artist maintains the monumentality and improvisational style of the Abstract Expressionists, but discards their emphasis on gesture, rejecting any suggestion of the artist’s hand. Painting without a brush, Louis instead relied on gravitational pull to bring his liquid paint across the canvas, leaning the work against a wall to establish the correct angle. The artist’s tools became the placement of the stretcher, the tautness or slackness of the unsized raw canvas, the viscosity and hue of the paint, and the direction and height of the pour.
The variety of his Veils reveals the breadth of Louis’ inventiveness and the limitless possibilities inherent to his format. Their moods range from mysterious and dramatic to lyrical and exuberant, depending on the colors he selected. The final color in most of the paintings falls within a brown-green-ochre range, achieving an effect of inner light. This technique was simply a means of achieving a desired effect, as such, it was devoid of the metaphysical significance that the action painters accorded to painting as an act of heroic self-expression. Critic Martica Sawin praises the result, writing how the Veils are “thin films of exquisite color, overlaid to fantastic depths without appreciable change in surface. They are paintings of incredible delicacy on an enormous scale… Louis is very much apart from New York School painting, yet he is seriously engaged in a totally independent effort to extend painting frontiers” (M. Sawain, “New York Letter,” Art International 3, May-June 1959, pp. 48-49).
The artist spent his career in Washington, D.C., where he painted daily and taught art at the Washington Workshop Center. Through the Workshop, Louis met fellow artist Kenneth Noland, with whom he would later establish the Washington Color School. This movement focused on the emotional capabilities of color and emphasized pure abstraction. Noland would introduce Louis to Clement Greenberg, the venerated essayist and art historian. This connection would catapult Louis into the New York art scene. It was Greenberg who arranged for the two artists to visit Helen Frankenthaler’s studio where her recent painting, Mountains and Sea (1952), impressed them powerfully.
Plenitude is one of Louis’ first mature works exploring the potential of the newly discovered stain technique inspired by that visit, after which Louis stated that Frankenthaler was “a bridge between Pollock and what was possible” (M. Louis quoted in G. Nordland, The Washington Color Painters, New York, 1965, p.12).
Louis was able translate the technical innovation and make it his own, creating his majestic Veils, which, in the words of the notable art critic Stuart Preston “surge with monumental grace on these large, strangely dramatic canvases, like chiffon back drops in the dream sequence of some symbolist play. Louis translates the chromatic calculations of Rothko into something that might be called chromatic mysticism. These pictures are esthetic to the last degree, and none the less unsubstantially beautiful for that” (S. Preston, “Sculpture and Paint: Contemporary Artists In Different Mediums,” New York Times, 26 April, 1959, p. X17).
"Louis translates the chromatic calculations of Rothko into something that might be called chromatic mysticism." - Stuart Preston
As one of the leading figures in the Color Field movement, Louis’s Veil paintings occupy a pivotal place in twentieth century art, establishing the critical link between Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. In these works, the artist maintains the monumentality and improvisational style of the Abstract Expressionists, but discards their emphasis on gesture, rejecting any suggestion of the artist’s hand. Painting without a brush, Louis instead relied on gravitational pull to bring his liquid paint across the canvas, leaning the work against a wall to establish the correct angle. The artist’s tools became the placement of the stretcher, the tautness or slackness of the unsized raw canvas, the viscosity and hue of the paint, and the direction and height of the pour.
The variety of his Veils reveals the breadth of Louis’ inventiveness and the limitless possibilities inherent to his format. Their moods range from mysterious and dramatic to lyrical and exuberant, depending on the colors he selected. The final color in most of the paintings falls within a brown-green-ochre range, achieving an effect of inner light. This technique was simply a means of achieving a desired effect, as such, it was devoid of the metaphysical significance that the action painters accorded to painting as an act of heroic self-expression. Critic Martica Sawin praises the result, writing how the Veils are “thin films of exquisite color, overlaid to fantastic depths without appreciable change in surface. They are paintings of incredible delicacy on an enormous scale… Louis is very much apart from New York School painting, yet he is seriously engaged in a totally independent effort to extend painting frontiers” (M. Sawain, “New York Letter,” Art International 3, May-June 1959, pp. 48-49).
The artist spent his career in Washington, D.C., where he painted daily and taught art at the Washington Workshop Center. Through the Workshop, Louis met fellow artist Kenneth Noland, with whom he would later establish the Washington Color School. This movement focused on the emotional capabilities of color and emphasized pure abstraction. Noland would introduce Louis to Clement Greenberg, the venerated essayist and art historian. This connection would catapult Louis into the New York art scene. It was Greenberg who arranged for the two artists to visit Helen Frankenthaler’s studio where her recent painting, Mountains and Sea (1952), impressed them powerfully.
Plenitude is one of Louis’ first mature works exploring the potential of the newly discovered stain technique inspired by that visit, after which Louis stated that Frankenthaler was “a bridge between Pollock and what was possible” (M. Louis quoted in G. Nordland, The Washington Color Painters, New York, 1965, p.12).
Louis was able translate the technical innovation and make it his own, creating his majestic Veils, which, in the words of the notable art critic Stuart Preston “surge with monumental grace on these large, strangely dramatic canvases, like chiffon back drops in the dream sequence of some symbolist play. Louis translates the chromatic calculations of Rothko into something that might be called chromatic mysticism. These pictures are esthetic to the last degree, and none the less unsubstantially beautiful for that” (S. Preston, “Sculpture and Paint: Contemporary Artists In Different Mediums,” New York Times, 26 April, 1959, p. X17).