.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
"I do open paintings. I like lightness, airiness, and the way color pulsates. The presence of the painting is all that’s important." - Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland’s magisterial Purkinje Effect is a vibrant early exemplar of the artist’s acclaimed Chevron series. Painted in 1964, a pivotal year for Noland, Purkinje Effect emerges from the Color Field artist’s bold new stylistic solution following his Circle paintings. Approaching the central vertical axis of the composition as his organizational coordinate, Noland deploys six parallel chevrons which proceed downward from the top edge of the canvas. With complementary shades of blue and green held in contrast with a powerful cadmium yellow, framed by a white chevron surrounded by an expanse of negative space revealing unprimed cotton duck canvas, Purkinje Effect perfectly articulates Noland’s stated intent: “I do open paintings. I like lightness, airiness, and the way color pulsates. The presence of the painting is all that’s important” (quoted in K. Moffett, Kenneth Noland, New York, 1977, p. 51). Purkinje Effect was acquired directly from the artist by the acclaimed British sculptor Sir Anthony Caro—Caro visited Noland’s Washington D.C. studio during his 1959 tour of the United States, and the two quickly became friends. Caro immediately recognized the significance which Noland would go on to have on his life and artistic career, and wrote Noland on his return to London: “I cannot help thinking that together and talking to Clem it could be more fruitful to me than all the rest of my trip to America, because in some way I think there were some keys to a new way of thinking about sculpture for me” (“Letter from Caro to Kenneth Noland, December 15, 1959,” in I. Barker, Anthony Caro: Quest for the New Sculpture, Hampshire, UK, 2004, p. 88).
Purkinje Effect is a prime example of Noland’s mastery of color. Staining the pigment into the very fabric of his canvas, the artist disembodies his colors and unifies their plane with that of the bare canvas so that color and surface are one in the same. The difference between painted and unpainted surfaces are suppressed in a revelatory way which proceeds to allow pictorial space to leak through the tableau and across the space of the painting. Oringinating from the ultramarine triangle centered at the top edge, the array of symmetrical colored chevrons descend downwards “like arrowheads moving down or across the picture surface, this dramatic layout impos[ing] a bold sense of direction,” as critic Terry Fenton describes (“Kenneth Noland,” in Kenneth Noland: An Important Exhibition of Paintings from 1958 through 1989, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, Inc., New York, 1989, p. 11).
Noland first learnt his color staining technique from a visit he and his fellow Color Field painter Morris Louis took to Helen Frankenthaler’s studio, and his innovations from then on led him to be acclaimed as “one of the most inventive colorists in all of modern art—perhaps one should dare to say in the history of art” (K. Moffett, op. cit., p. 55). This inventiveness is exemplified in Purkinje Effect. The title refers to an optical effect theorized by Jan Evangelista Purkinje, and postulates the tendency for color to appear more blue in environments with low light levels. Noland toys with this optical phenomenon here, recalling the work of Josef Albers, placing fields of blue surrounded by both bright and dark colors, excavating contrast value via the interrelation between light and eyesight. Noland explained about the body of work “It was the image, a kind of a convenience that does a very certain kind of thing, which is to focus the eyes on one image, as it were one configuration, which is what the circles did, and which is what the chevrons did. […] I’ve gotten very interested in the simultaneous levels of seeing different depths of colors, scales of colors, that exist simultaneously” (quoted in A. Breman, “A Conversation with Kenneth Noland,” Geometric Abstract Art Magazine, 6 February 2021, digital). Noland’s choice of white for his outermost chevron—an exceedingly rare choice in his Chevron series—further emphasizes this effect.
In 1964, the year he made Purkinje Effect, Clement Greenberg included Noland in his influential traveling exhibition Post Painterly Abstraction, which toured to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Art Gallery of Toronto. He was also included as one of eight Americans, including Robert Rauschenberg, in the famed 32nd Biennale di Venezia. Noland was living in Vermont in 1964, where he was reunited with Anthony Caro, who was teaching at Bennington College. The two friends, along with Jules Olitski, would see each other daily, convening with their families each evening to have prolonged discussions. These gatherings, which frequently included visitors including Greenberg, Michael Fried, and others, had a profound impact on all three artists. Caro later recalled that “the conversations with those guys were incredible, because it was a whole new way of thinking… the way they drove themselves to the edge of possibility was different” (op. cjt., 125). Noland and Caro would continue to be lifelong friends, with Noland generously lending studio space to Caro during the sculptor’s frequent trips to the United States. In a later interview, Sir Anthony Caro articulated just how important Noland was to him as a friend and artistic confident: “I saw [Noland’s] first show where he hit his own thing…I felt that it was important and I thought it was interesting as hell… the meetings with Ken were very formulative for me, not only because he later became… my closest friend, but also because he gave me the confidence of being able to make art which counted… I know nobody who can talk more intelligently about painting than Ken—no artist” (“Noel Chanan interview, September 1974,” in I. Baker, op. cit., p. 88).
Kenneth Noland’s magisterial Purkinje Effect is a vibrant early exemplar of the artist’s acclaimed Chevron series. Painted in 1964, a pivotal year for Noland, Purkinje Effect emerges from the Color Field artist’s bold new stylistic solution following his Circle paintings. Approaching the central vertical axis of the composition as his organizational coordinate, Noland deploys six parallel chevrons which proceed downward from the top edge of the canvas. With complementary shades of blue and green held in contrast with a powerful cadmium yellow, framed by a white chevron surrounded by an expanse of negative space revealing unprimed cotton duck canvas, Purkinje Effect perfectly articulates Noland’s stated intent: “I do open paintings. I like lightness, airiness, and the way color pulsates. The presence of the painting is all that’s important” (quoted in K. Moffett, Kenneth Noland, New York, 1977, p. 51). Purkinje Effect was acquired directly from the artist by the acclaimed British sculptor Sir Anthony Caro—Caro visited Noland’s Washington D.C. studio during his 1959 tour of the United States, and the two quickly became friends. Caro immediately recognized the significance which Noland would go on to have on his life and artistic career, and wrote Noland on his return to London: “I cannot help thinking that together and talking to Clem it could be more fruitful to me than all the rest of my trip to America, because in some way I think there were some keys to a new way of thinking about sculpture for me” (“Letter from Caro to Kenneth Noland, December 15, 1959,” in I. Barker, Anthony Caro: Quest for the New Sculpture, Hampshire, UK, 2004, p. 88).
Purkinje Effect is a prime example of Noland’s mastery of color. Staining the pigment into the very fabric of his canvas, the artist disembodies his colors and unifies their plane with that of the bare canvas so that color and surface are one in the same. The difference between painted and unpainted surfaces are suppressed in a revelatory way which proceeds to allow pictorial space to leak through the tableau and across the space of the painting. Oringinating from the ultramarine triangle centered at the top edge, the array of symmetrical colored chevrons descend downwards “like arrowheads moving down or across the picture surface, this dramatic layout impos[ing] a bold sense of direction,” as critic Terry Fenton describes (“Kenneth Noland,” in Kenneth Noland: An Important Exhibition of Paintings from 1958 through 1989, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, Inc., New York, 1989, p. 11).
Noland first learnt his color staining technique from a visit he and his fellow Color Field painter Morris Louis took to Helen Frankenthaler’s studio, and his innovations from then on led him to be acclaimed as “one of the most inventive colorists in all of modern art—perhaps one should dare to say in the history of art” (K. Moffett, op. cit., p. 55). This inventiveness is exemplified in Purkinje Effect. The title refers to an optical effect theorized by Jan Evangelista Purkinje, and postulates the tendency for color to appear more blue in environments with low light levels. Noland toys with this optical phenomenon here, recalling the work of Josef Albers, placing fields of blue surrounded by both bright and dark colors, excavating contrast value via the interrelation between light and eyesight. Noland explained about the body of work “It was the image, a kind of a convenience that does a very certain kind of thing, which is to focus the eyes on one image, as it were one configuration, which is what the circles did, and which is what the chevrons did. […] I’ve gotten very interested in the simultaneous levels of seeing different depths of colors, scales of colors, that exist simultaneously” (quoted in A. Breman, “A Conversation with Kenneth Noland,” Geometric Abstract Art Magazine, 6 February 2021, digital). Noland’s choice of white for his outermost chevron—an exceedingly rare choice in his Chevron series—further emphasizes this effect.
In 1964, the year he made Purkinje Effect, Clement Greenberg included Noland in his influential traveling exhibition Post Painterly Abstraction, which toured to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Art Gallery of Toronto. He was also included as one of eight Americans, including Robert Rauschenberg, in the famed 32nd Biennale di Venezia. Noland was living in Vermont in 1964, where he was reunited with Anthony Caro, who was teaching at Bennington College. The two friends, along with Jules Olitski, would see each other daily, convening with their families each evening to have prolonged discussions. These gatherings, which frequently included visitors including Greenberg, Michael Fried, and others, had a profound impact on all three artists. Caro later recalled that “the conversations with those guys were incredible, because it was a whole new way of thinking… the way they drove themselves to the edge of possibility was different” (op. cjt., 125). Noland and Caro would continue to be lifelong friends, with Noland generously lending studio space to Caro during the sculptor’s frequent trips to the United States. In a later interview, Sir Anthony Caro articulated just how important Noland was to him as a friend and artistic confident: “I saw [Noland’s] first show where he hit his own thing…I felt that it was important and I thought it was interesting as hell… the meetings with Ken were very formulative for me, not only because he later became… my closest friend, but also because he gave me the confidence of being able to make art which counted… I know nobody who can talk more intelligently about painting than Ken—no artist” (“Noel Chanan interview, September 1974,” in I. Baker, op. cit., p. 88).