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Lot Essay
Kenneth Noland’s paintings are usually in a precise, geometric format with color that is optically active, constantly shifting its spatial position in the eyes of the viewer. His feeling for composition in color is, in part, an outgrowth of his time spent at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, between 1946 and 1948. There he studied with Josef Albers, who taught Bauhaus color theory, concentrating on the optical interaction of colors. He also had classes with Ilya Bolotowsky, a follower of Mondrian.
During the next decade Noland began to use acrylic-based paint to stain color into the very fabric of the raw canvas. (This method, like the handmade paper pieces of the 1970s, did not allow for reworking.) In the late 1960s came the first horizontal stripe paintings in which color was more than ever the essential element of the piece. The cast paper pulp Horizontal Stripe series of 1978, derived in format from the acrylics, is composed of unique color variants combining a variety of ways of working with the raw material. Besides using pulp that had been pre-dyed to his specifications, Noland painted with liquid dyes, staining the still-wet pulp, and dropped confetti-like bits of found colored fabric into the mixture as it set. These horizontal fields of color — mostly earth tones — are layers that have fused together, resulting in a thickly textured sheet. The new process offers the opportunity to experiment with new color and textural relationships and a looser, more painterly manner of execution than is the case in Noland’s precise, carefully planned canvases.
Nancy Green, The Modern Art of the Print: Selections from the Collection of Lois and Michael Torf, p. 117
During the next decade Noland began to use acrylic-based paint to stain color into the very fabric of the raw canvas. (This method, like the handmade paper pieces of the 1970s, did not allow for reworking.) In the late 1960s came the first horizontal stripe paintings in which color was more than ever the essential element of the piece. The cast paper pulp Horizontal Stripe series of 1978, derived in format from the acrylics, is composed of unique color variants combining a variety of ways of working with the raw material. Besides using pulp that had been pre-dyed to his specifications, Noland painted with liquid dyes, staining the still-wet pulp, and dropped confetti-like bits of found colored fabric into the mixture as it set. These horizontal fields of color — mostly earth tones — are layers that have fused together, resulting in a thickly textured sheet. The new process offers the opportunity to experiment with new color and textural relationships and a looser, more painterly manner of execution than is the case in Noland’s precise, carefully planned canvases.
Nancy Green, The Modern Art of the Print: Selections from the Collection of Lois and Michael Torf, p. 117