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Lot Essay
Ellsworth Kelly’s monumental painting is an early example of the artist’s unique approach to abstraction, in which he carved out a unique space for himself within the dominant field of painting in the latter half of the twentieth century. Painted in 1959, York eschews the gestural machinations that had preoccupied many of his fellow New York School artists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and instead focused almost entirely on simple forms which encouraged engagement via periods of prolonged study. The present work belongs to a group of black-and-white paintings that the artist began in the early 1950s, and which would become the basis for much of his subsequent career. By removing color, Kelly focuses attention on the salient features of his given forms, the essence and perfection of which “are rendered visible by the divergence of the complete absence of color and totality of light” (U. Wilmes, “Black and White,” in Ellsworth Kelly: Black and White, exh. cat., Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2012, p. 5).
Kelly stood apart from other members of his generation due to the radically different approach that he took to abstraction. He sought to visualize the interaction between, and interdependence of, positive and negative space, and saw the consideration of this as a means to an end in itself. This can clearly be seen in the present work, where the essence of the painting is visible in the relationship between the motif, the painting, and the color (even in the case of black and white). As John Coplans has noted “The unrelieved use of black and white intensified the process of abstraction by further removing the image from its natural coloration” (ibid., p. 6).
Kelly’s compositions were inspired by glimpses of shadows and forms that he witnessed in nature, and are not regarded so much as developed abstractions, as they are reduced figurations, removing all peripheral elements to reveal the essence of a perceived thing. Thus, as the artist himself has said, each work resolves into a mere “fragment of the world, to compete with other fragments” (quoted in M. Grynsztejn, “Clear-Cut: The Art of Ellsworth Kelly,” in Ellsworth Kelly in San Francisco, exh. cat. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 11). In this way, Kelly fashioned himself less a creator and more an observer—one who recognized art in the environment and presented it for others to examine: “Everywhere I looked, everything I saw became something to be made, and it had to be made exactly as it was, with nothing added. It was a new freedom: there was no longer the need to compose. The subject was there already, and I could take from everything; it all belonged to me” (quoted in J. Coplans, Ellsworth Kelly, New York, 1971, p. 28).
With works such as York, Kelly was making a contribution to a history of painting in black and white that dates back to the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first artists to argue specifically for the inclusion of black and white in the palette, something that ran contra to prevailing thought which regarded black and white to be the absence of color. “We shall set down white for the representation of light, without which no color can be seen…and black for total darkness,” he wrote (quoted in ibid., p. 5). Treating black and white as colors was also of importance to the early European modernists such as Kazimir Malevich, who made it the primary subject of paintings such as Black Circle (1923, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg) and Black Square (1913, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow). Later in the twentieth century, artists such as Jasper Johns (with his white Flags, Targets, and Numbers) and Frank Stella were using these pigments with dramatic effect. Around the same time as Kelly was painting York, Stella produced a series of striking black canvases in which the emblematic nature of the gesture seemed to have been eradicated altogether, causing him to utter his famous declaration “What you see is what you see” (quoted in W.S. Rubin, Frank Stella, New York, 1970, pp. 41-42).
The present work was first exhibited in 1959 in the legendary Sixteen Americans exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art. Organized by the pioneering curator Dorothy Miller, in the accompanying catalogue she described the work as being of “unusually fresh, richly varied, vigorous, and youthful character… Whether as a result of years of experiment and achievement or through an early flowering of talent and promise, each artist brings to this exhibition a personal expression distilled out of his own world and thought” (Sixteen Americans, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1960, pp. 6-7). In addition to Kelly’s York, the exhibition also included Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines, Jasper John’s white Flags and Targets, and Frank Stella’s Black Paintings. Although, initially derided by critics, the works on display—and the artists who produced them—soon afterwards entered the worldwide canon of twentieth-century art.
Though his work is often seen through the lens of mid-century abstraction, Kelly himself was deeply mired in the annals of history and his work was a direct commentary on what he saw painting had become. He called for a return to more immediate experiences of the artform in a 1950 letter to John Cage when he decried, “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… We must make our art like the Egyptians… It should meet the eye—direct” (quoted in Ellsworth Kelly: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1996, p. 11). During his career-spanning innovations, the artist pushed the limits of color and shape while foregrounding the inimitable qualities of pigment itself. Much like the Impressionists decades before him sought to capture light directly from the world and place it on canvas, Kelly’s startlingly consistent motivator was to divorce color from any sort of representation in order to more fully understand its building blocks and the forces that laid therein. By laying bare this most basic notion of Western painting, works such as York serve as striking treatises on the ability of the artist to create pictorial tension with even the most base elements.
Kelly stood apart from other members of his generation due to the radically different approach that he took to abstraction. He sought to visualize the interaction between, and interdependence of, positive and negative space, and saw the consideration of this as a means to an end in itself. This can clearly be seen in the present work, where the essence of the painting is visible in the relationship between the motif, the painting, and the color (even in the case of black and white). As John Coplans has noted “The unrelieved use of black and white intensified the process of abstraction by further removing the image from its natural coloration” (ibid., p. 6).
Kelly’s compositions were inspired by glimpses of shadows and forms that he witnessed in nature, and are not regarded so much as developed abstractions, as they are reduced figurations, removing all peripheral elements to reveal the essence of a perceived thing. Thus, as the artist himself has said, each work resolves into a mere “fragment of the world, to compete with other fragments” (quoted in M. Grynsztejn, “Clear-Cut: The Art of Ellsworth Kelly,” in Ellsworth Kelly in San Francisco, exh. cat. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 11). In this way, Kelly fashioned himself less a creator and more an observer—one who recognized art in the environment and presented it for others to examine: “Everywhere I looked, everything I saw became something to be made, and it had to be made exactly as it was, with nothing added. It was a new freedom: there was no longer the need to compose. The subject was there already, and I could take from everything; it all belonged to me” (quoted in J. Coplans, Ellsworth Kelly, New York, 1971, p. 28).
With works such as York, Kelly was making a contribution to a history of painting in black and white that dates back to the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first artists to argue specifically for the inclusion of black and white in the palette, something that ran contra to prevailing thought which regarded black and white to be the absence of color. “We shall set down white for the representation of light, without which no color can be seen…and black for total darkness,” he wrote (quoted in ibid., p. 5). Treating black and white as colors was also of importance to the early European modernists such as Kazimir Malevich, who made it the primary subject of paintings such as Black Circle (1923, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg) and Black Square (1913, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow). Later in the twentieth century, artists such as Jasper Johns (with his white Flags, Targets, and Numbers) and Frank Stella were using these pigments with dramatic effect. Around the same time as Kelly was painting York, Stella produced a series of striking black canvases in which the emblematic nature of the gesture seemed to have been eradicated altogether, causing him to utter his famous declaration “What you see is what you see” (quoted in W.S. Rubin, Frank Stella, New York, 1970, pp. 41-42).
The present work was first exhibited in 1959 in the legendary Sixteen Americans exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art. Organized by the pioneering curator Dorothy Miller, in the accompanying catalogue she described the work as being of “unusually fresh, richly varied, vigorous, and youthful character… Whether as a result of years of experiment and achievement or through an early flowering of talent and promise, each artist brings to this exhibition a personal expression distilled out of his own world and thought” (Sixteen Americans, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1960, pp. 6-7). In addition to Kelly’s York, the exhibition also included Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines, Jasper John’s white Flags and Targets, and Frank Stella’s Black Paintings. Although, initially derided by critics, the works on display—and the artists who produced them—soon afterwards entered the worldwide canon of twentieth-century art.
Though his work is often seen through the lens of mid-century abstraction, Kelly himself was deeply mired in the annals of history and his work was a direct commentary on what he saw painting had become. He called for a return to more immediate experiences of the artform in a 1950 letter to John Cage when he decried, “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… We must make our art like the Egyptians… It should meet the eye—direct” (quoted in Ellsworth Kelly: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1996, p. 11). During his career-spanning innovations, the artist pushed the limits of color and shape while foregrounding the inimitable qualities of pigment itself. Much like the Impressionists decades before him sought to capture light directly from the world and place it on canvas, Kelly’s startlingly consistent motivator was to divorce color from any sort of representation in order to more fully understand its building blocks and the forces that laid therein. By laying bare this most basic notion of Western painting, works such as York serve as striking treatises on the ability of the artist to create pictorial tension with even the most base elements.