Chapter 20 playing by the rules1960s abstraction

Chapter 20
PLAYING BY THE
RULES: 1960s
ABSTRACTION

Clement Greenberg was most influential art critic in the 20th century.
He support for Abstract Expressionism, and in particular Jackson Pollock,
shaped the work of many other artists, including
• Helen Frankenthaler,
• Morris Louis, and
• Kenneth Noland.
He focused his rigorous approach to criticism on the formal elements of art
• color,
• line
• space
• balance and so forth
Greenberg’s criticism has influenced generations of critics and historians.

Some of the concepts Clement Greenberg introduced into discussion of 20th-
century art were:
• "kitsch,"
• "easel picture,"
• and pictorial "flatness,"
Greenberg also invented concepts such as:
• "allover" paint surface
• "optical space.“
Greenberg’s strongly supported Abstract Expressionism because he
believed that abstract art was the means to resist politics and commerce in
art. He was vehemently opposed to Pop and Neo-Dada.

Francis and Mitchell
Sam Francis studied botany, medicine and
psychology at the University of California,
Berkeley.
He was injured in a plane crash while he served
in the United States Air Force during World War
II. He began to paint in the hospital where he
stayed for several years. Upon recovery, he
returned to Berkeley to study art.
Joan Mitchel created rhythmic, boldly
colored, large and multi-paneled paintings. She
was inspired by landscape, nature, and poetry.
Her intent was to convey emotions.
Mitchell's early success in the 1950s was
remarcable because at a time few women artists
were recognized.
Sam Francis. Shining
Back, 1958. Oil on canvas.
6’ 7-3⁄8” × 4’ 5-1⁄8”
Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum New York
Drawing the Veil:
Post Painterly Abstraction

Francis spent the 1950s in Paris where
he became associated with Tachisme, a
French style of abstract painting.
His mature pieces consist of splashed
or splattered areas of bright colors.
Areas of white canvas are often left to
show through, and in later works, paint
is sometimes confined to the edges of
the canvas.
During the last year of his life, suffering
from cancer and unable to paint with
his right hand after a fall, he used his
left hand to complete a series of about
150 small paintings before he died.
Sam Francis. Untitled, No. 11.
1973. Acrylic on canvas. 8 × 10’.
Jonathan Novak Contemporary
Art, Los Angeles

Helen Frankenthaler. Mountains
and Sea, 1952. Oil and charcoal
on canvas. 86 × 117”. National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Frankenthaler, Louis and Olitski
The painter and printmaker, Helen
Frankenthaler, was one of the most
influential artists of the mid-twentieth-
century.
She developed her own distinct approach
to Abstract Expressionism. She created a
variant of Jackson Pollock's pouring
technique when she invented the "soak-
stain" technique, in which she poured
turpentine-thinned paint onto canvas,
producing luminous color washes that
denied any three-dimensional illusionism.
Pollock used enamel paints, which remain
on the surface of the canvas when dried.

Frankenthaler’s breakthrough gave rise to the
movement promoted by the art critic Clement
Greenberg as Color Field painting, which was
characterized by airy compositions of pure
color that gave an entirely new look and feel
to the surface of the canvas.
Frankenthaler applied also her breakthrough
soak-stain technique to watered-down
acrylic, which she used in place of
turpentine-thinned paint starting in the 1960s.
In another major departure from first-
generation Abstract Expressionism,
Frankenthaler was an abstract artist for
whom the natural landscape served as the
major focus and inspiration
Helen Frankenthaler.
Interior Landscape, 1964
Acrylic on canvas
8’ 8-3⁄4” × 7’ 8-3⁄4”.
San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art

Helen Frankenthaler Splish,
Splash. 1966 Acrylic on
canvas.
Later in her career, Frankenthaler
focused her attention to woodcut, in
which she achieved the quality of her
paintings, in some cases replicating the
effects of her soak-stain process.
Frankenthaler's soak-stain technique
had a decisive influence on the work of
the other artists associated with this
style, such as Morris Louis, Kenneth
Noland, and Jules Olitski.
In addition, Color Field is also often
seen as an important precursor of
1960s Minimalism, with its spare,
meditative quality

Morris Louis’ work combines Abstract
Expressionism and Color Field painting.
Louis developed his technique of pouring
paint freely down the canvas after seeing
the "stain" paintings of Helen
Frankenthaler in 1952.
In 1954 Louis began painting the first
series of his mature style, known as
"Veils" because of their overlapping
layers of color (Breaking Hues, 1954).
He used thinned Magna, and poured it
over large un-stretched and unprimed
canvases, allowing the pigment to take
its own course, and to soak directly into
the canvas.
Morris Louis. Kaf. 1959-60
Acrylic on canvas. 8 ’4” x 12’.
Collection of Kimiko and John
G. Powers. New York.

In 1957, he burned all but ten of several hundred
works from the previous three years. This kind of
revision was typical of his experimentation and
perfectionism.
In the summer of 1960, Louis began a the series
called Unfurleds.
• Their name comes from Louis’ folding the
canvas before pouring the paint, and then
unrolled it as the paint soaked it.
How he did this it is not known. He never
documented his method, and didn’t allow anyone
to watch him work in his converted dining-room
studio.
Morris Louis.
Moving In, 1961-
1962, 87 ½” x 41 ½.
Acrylic resin
(Magna) on canvas,
Private collection,
Fort Worth, Texas,
United States .

Louis' final series of paintings, called
Stripes, feature planned lines, which
makes them more closely related to
Barnett Newman than Jackson Pollock.
The simplified color and compositions
prefigure the Post-painterly abstraction
of artists like Frank Stella and Ellsworth
Kelley. Louis’ style is viewed as an
influence on movements such as
Minimalism.
When Jules Olitski was discovered by
Greenberg, he was painting in an
Abstract Expressionist style. In 1964 he
began using rollers to press paint into
the canvas in uninterrupted color.
Morris Louis. Equator, 1962, 63
x 63 1/4 in. (160.0 x 160.7 cm),
Acrylic resin (Magna) on
canvas. Andre Ememrich
Galelry, New York.

Poons
Launched his artistic career
with his Op Art paintings of
the 1960s which consisted of
monochrome canvases with
marks that draw the eye
across the surface
His style has shifted through
various aesthetic modes that
include painterly style
similar to Abstract
Expressionism or Lyrical
Abstraction.
Larry Poons. Nixes Mate. 1964. Acrylic on
canvas. 5’ 10” × 9’ 4”. Formerly Collection
Robert C. Scull, New York.

Richard Diebenkorn defined the
California school of Abstract
Expressionism of the early 1950s.
He provided an alternative for other
artists who were interested in of
Abstract Expressionism but not
involved in the New York School
Diebenkorn's earliest paintings reflect
his interest in Hopper's style, with stark
contrasts between shadow and light.
An Oblique Angle:
Diebenkorn
Richard Diebenkorn. Man and Woman in a Large Room,
1957. Oil on Canvas. 71 1/8 x 62 1/2 in. Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C.,

Richard Diebenkorn. Ocean Park
#54, 1972. Oil and charcoal on
canvas, San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art
Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series,
consists of one hundred and forty
paintings.
He made them over twenty-five
years.
They are abstract, but much more
geometric and planned than his
Abstract Expressionist works of the
1950s.
Diebenkorn’s paintings are abstract
investigations of space, light, and
color that evoke landscape and
architectural forms.

Throughout his artistic Elsworth Kelly focused
on the dynamic relationships between shape,
form and color.
Kelly was one of the first artists to create
irregularly shaped canvases.
During the early 1960s and 1970s he influenced
Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, and James
Rosenquist. He also influenced Minimalist
sculptors such as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and
Richard Serra.
Although he has never identified himself with
any school, he has had a significant influence
on what Clement Greenberg called "post-
painterly abstraction“.
Ellsworth Kelly. Orange
and Green, 1966. Liquitex
on canvas, 7’ 4” × 5’ 5”.
Collection of Robert and
Jane Meyerhoff, Phoenix,
Maryland.
Framing the Unit: Hard
Edge Painting

Kenneth Noland's paintings are
minimalist and strikingly simple
compositions of line and color.
Noland was influenced by Josef
Albers. He experimented with a
variety of forms and colors in order to
challenge people's perceptions.
Noland took Abstract Expressionism,
combined the geometric abstraction
of Mondrian and the color
interactions of Albers, and created
abstractions consisting of pure
forms.
Kenneth Noland. A Warm Sound
in a Gray Field, 1961. Acrylic on
canvas. 6’ 10-1⁄2” × 6’ 9”. Private
collection New York

Vasareli
Victor Vasarely, was a leader of the Op
Art movement,.
His innovations in color and optical
illusion had a strong influence on
many modern artists.
Vasarely created an art language that
allowed for endless permutations of
forms and colors to create unique
works.
In his kinetic artworks Vassarelly
includes the 4th dimension,
simultaneity and time in the visual
arts.
Victor Vasarely. Sorata-T, 1953
Triptych, engraved glass slabs
6’ 6” × 15’. Private collection
Seeing Things: Op Art

Victor Vasarely
Vega Per, 1969
Oil on canvas
64 × 64”
Honolulu Academy
of Arts

Riley studied at Goldsmiths' College
from 1949 to 1952, and at the Royal
College of Art from 1952 to 1955.
In 1960 she worked in a style in which
she explored the dynamic potentialities
of optical phenomena.
Her paintings of the 1960s became
synonymous with the Op Art.
Riley focused on the optical
experience, not color theories, math, or
science.
Her paintings provoke both uncertainty
and clarity.
Bridget Riley. Drift No. 2, 1966.
Emulsion on canvas.
7’ 7-1⁄2” × 7’ 5-1⁄2”. Albright-Knox
Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

New Media Mobilized:
Motion and Light
Kinetic art
• includes motion as a vital element of design
• has its origins in the Dadaist and Constructivist movements that
emerged in the 1910s.
• became an avant-garde movement following the landmark exhibition
Le Mouvement at Galerie Denise Rene in Paris in 1955.
Artists creating kinetic sculptures were interested in the possibilities of
motion in art as a new way to create interactive relationships with the
viewer and new visual experiences.
Artists that employed motion in their sculptures were divided:
• Artists interested in employing actual movement such as Jean
Tinguely
• Artists interested in optical effects and the illusion of movement
and went on to be more closely associated with the Op art
movement such as Victor Vasarely.

Mobiles and Kinetic Art
The Kinetic art movement was the
first to offer works of art which
included time.
Calder created numerous, public
sculptures between 1958 to the 1970s.
They included some mobiles, but his
outdoor works were more often large-
scale stabiles.
Works such as La Grande Vitesse
inspired the production of public art
during the second half of the 20th
century.
Alexander Calder. La Grande
Vitesse, 1969. Sheet metal, bolts,
Paint. 43 × 55 × 25’.
Grand Rapids Michigan

Jesús Rafaël Soto is one of the
most important Latin American
artists of the 20th century.
He was a major contributor to the
advancement of kinetic art and
large scale installations, in the
1950s.
Soto’s constructions react to
external changes in the
atmosphere.
He lived and worked in Caracas
and Paris.
Jesus Rafaël Soto. Triptico negro
y blanco, 1973. Paint on wood,
metal,and nylon.
84-1⁄4 × 79-1⁄2”.Private collection

Dan Flavin. untitled (to Tracy, to
celebrate the love of a lifetime).
Pink, green, blue, yellow, daylight, red,
and ultraviolet fluorescent light.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York
Artists Working with Light
Dan Flavin
• maximized the use of
readymade objects in the
style of Dadaist Marcel
Duchamp
• exploited the most banal
material: harsh fluorescent
lights.
• began incorporating electric
lights into his works in the
early 1960s.
• the prefabricated materials
allowed Flavin to focus on
the light itself.

Minimalism has evolved since its birth in the early 1960’s, to include a
large number of artistic media.
Its roots can be found in the art of:
• Mondrian,
• van Doesburg,
• Reinhardt,
• and in Malevich's monochromes.
It started as a self-conscious movement in New York.
The leading figures of the movement were:
• Donald Judd,
• Frank Stella,
• Robert Morris,
Minimalists attempted to avoid metaphorical associations, symbolism,
and transcendence.
The Limits Of Modernism:
Minimalism

Minimalists rejected the formalist
dogma embraced by the critic Clement
Greenberg that placed limitations on
the art of painting and privileged artists
who seemed to paint under his
direction.
Caro
• abandoned the anthropomorphic
motifs of his early work
• embraced dynamic, expressionistic
assemblages of steel and other
materials.
• integrated the spaces and surfaces
around the sculpture into the work
itself.
Anthony Caro. Riviera, 1971–74
Rusted steel. 10’ 7” × 27’ × 10’.
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Bagley
Right, Seatle.

Stella
• focused on the formal elements of art-
making
• created complicated work by expanding
his initial monochrome palette to bright
colors, and, later, moving painting into
the third dimension
• his Black Paintings series consists of
precise parallel black stripes produced
by smoothly applied house paint.
• the striped pattern was intended to
emphasize the flatness of the canvas
and against the notion that a painting
should be a window onto three-
dimensional space.
Frank Stella. Die Fahne Hoch!
(Raise the Flag!) 1959. Enamel
on canvas. 10’ 1-1⁄2” × 6’ 1”.
Whitney Museum of American
Art, New York

Frank Stella. Agbatana III, 1968.
Fluorescent acrylic on canvas.
9’ 11-7⁄8” × 14’ 11-7⁄8”. Allen Memorial
Gallery, Oberlin College, Oberlin,
Ohio
• Stella explored new
expressions of formal
abstraction since he arrived
on the New York art scene in
1959.
• First his black paintings and
shaped canvases, then
monumental geometric
constructions known as the
Protractor series, followed by
several decades of works
challenged the distinction
between painting and
sculpture.

Smith, Judd, and Moris
Tony Smith
• was trained at the New
Bauhaus in Chicago in the
1930s
• contributed much to the birth
of Minimalism in the 1960s.
• worked to some extent by
intuition with an interest in
forms and the process of
growth.
Tony Smith. Cigarette. 1961–66.
Plywood model to be made in Steel. 15 ×
26 × 18’. Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Die was
• one of Tony Smith's first steel
sculptures
• the inspiration for much of his
later work.
He had made a six-inch cardboard
model in 1962, and had Die
fabricated in 1968.
The sculpture
• has deceptively simple title
• invites multiple associations
• die casting,
• one of a pair of dice,
• to death.
Tony Smith. Die, 1962. Steel,
edition of three. 6 × 6 × 6’.
Private collection

Donald Judd
• in the 1960s, began to create objects
that occupied three-dimensional space
and rejected illusionism.
• Untitled is an example of the repetition
considered to be Judd's trademark.
• His work is almost mathematically
precise but he claimed it mean nothing
to him in these terms.
• He was impatient with critics who
claim that his works and those of other
Minimal artists have no meaning. Donald Judd. Untitled, 1965
Galvanized iron, seven boxes
each 9 × 40 × 31”. 9” between each
box. Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Donald Judd.
Untitled, 1977
Concrete, outer ring
diameter 49’ 3”,
height 2’ 11”;
inner ring diameter
44’ 3”, height 2’ 11”–6’
10”
Münster, Germany
• In the early 1970s, Judd started making larger
and more complex sculptures.
• He believed that art should not represent
anything, that it should stand on its own.

Robert Morris, Exhibition,
Green Gallery, New York,
1964.
Robert Morris
• in the 1960s he focused on an art stripped
to simple geometric shapes in order to
avoid metaphorical associations.
• explored chance, temporality, and
ephemerality.
• focused on the artwork's interaction with
the viewer.
• had an impressively diverse range that
extended beyond Minimalism which
included other contemporary American
art movements, most notably,
• Process art
• Land art.

LeWitt, Andre, and Serra
LeWitt‘
• his visual vocabulary
consisted of lines, basic colors
and simplified shapes.
• he developed his work
according to formulas he
invented.
• his minimalist approach of
simplicity and clarity, was
embraced by Eva Hesse and
Frank Stella.
Sol LeWitt, Sculpture Series “A,”
1967. Installation view, Dwan
Gallery, Los Angeles

Carl Andre’s most significant
contribution was
• to eliminate the processes
of
• carving,
• modeling,
• constructing,
from sculpture and to make
works by deciding and placing
the materials.
Serra
One Ton Prop is made like a
house of cards, by one edge of
each sheet of lead leaning
against the other.
Richard Serra. One Ton Prop (House
of Cards).1986. Lead antimony, four
plates, Each plate 48 x 48 x 1“.
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Minimalist Painters
Agnes Martin used the grid as an organizational
element in canvases that were awash with
color.
She blended Minimalism and Color Field
painting. Her works are non-representational,
but the titles indicate that she was influenced
by nature
Agnes Martin. Night
Sea, . 1963. Oil and
gold leaf on canvas.
6 × 6’. Private
collection
Agnes Martin. Untitled Number 5,
1975. Synthetic polymer paint and
pencil on synthetic polymer gesso
on canvas. 71-7⁄8 × 72-1⁄4”
The Museum of Modern Art

Ryman was one of the pioneers of
Minimalist painting.
His works
• attempt to empty the painting of
content
• focus almost entirely on
• form
• and process,
• a style in which he worked for
almost sixty years.
His sticking with Minimalism for such
a long period of time made him one of
the movement's most committed
adherents.
Robert Ryman. Classico III,
1968. Polymer on paper.
7’ 9” × 7’ 5”. Stedelijk Museum
Amsterdam

Marden's work explored:
• light,
• color,
• and surface.
His work of the first twenty years
is characterized by monochrome
panels.
Brice Marden constantly pushed
the boundaries of his aesthetic,
producing artworks that display
elegance and lyrical beauty.
Brice Marden. Study for the Muses
(Hydra Version). 1991–95/1997. Oil
on linen, 83 x 135"

Ray K. Metzker’s photography depicts
the realities of modern life.
Metzker is well known for his composite
which which he made by combining the
images on one roll of film..
At first glance they appear abstract, but
a closer look reveals the images to be
photographs.
Complex Unities:
Photography and Minimalism
Ray K. Metzker, Untitled,
Gelatin silver prints ,1966-67.
32 5/16 x 35 3/16“. The Museum
of Modern Art, New York.

Chapter 20 playing by the rules1960s abstraction

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Chapter 20 playing by the rules1960s abstraction