I feel like I’ve seen this thing happen a million times - somebody walks into an art
gallery, see a painting that’s just say a big block of colour or something, and go
- what am I supposed to be looking at?
And I gotta say - I totally understand this feeling and I can relate to where people are
coming from. These type of works - known in art history as “colour field paintings”
or “post-painterly abstraction." There is not an immediately obvious way to interact
with these works. But as is with everything else in life - nothing is as simple as it
first seem, and there is actually so much to talk about.
Firstly, if you start to think about it. You may think, well what’s so interesting about
colours and shapes? Well, in fact, colours and shapes ARE super interesting. It’s like
asking why is the sky blue. It seems like - well it just is. It’s so simple. But if
you really think about all the intricacies of the electromagnetic spectrum and you think
about how sunlight and its various wavelengths are dispersed in our atmosphere - well that
is super interesting. But if you are still having trouble, then lets take a look at a
few examples.
Frank Stella is a painter who was initially known for painting deductive shapes - such
as line and shapes that follow the shape of the canvas that it’s painted on, are proportional
to the canvas, or are geometrically related to the shape of the canvas. In later years,
Frank Stella would go not only paint on canvas that are rectangularly shaped, he would also
go on to produce irregular shaped canvases such as polygons and half-circles.
Artists like Kenneth Noland, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman were also know for creating
works that explored the elemental nature of colour. Most of them insisted on making the
artworks be about itself and have explorations of colours and shapes on the canvases be the
utmost important factor. You might take look at a painting by Noland like this one and
see some sort of a sunset over a watery horizon - but that is not how he intended it. Here,
the artist’s goal is not have you think about external factors. You are meant to contemplate
and explore the pure elements of the form itself. This is very different from almost
all other forms of art that have come before it. Almost all other art forms are on some
level related to some type of external history, context or narrative - such as a religious
painting that’s supposed to be depicting a story from the bible, or a cubist painting
that's alluding to the horrors of war. Here, apparently, all that’s supposed to matter
are the colour and the shape that are in front of you. But you might ask - do viewers have
to be bound by the artist’s original intention? Does it matter what they think we should think?
And that’s a good question.
Some colour field artists are also quite innovative when it comes to their technique. Some of
you may have heard of the artist Jackson Pollock - who was known for flinging paint onto a
canvas with a paintbrush back in the 1950s. In the 1960s artist Helen Frankenthaler took
this in kind of a different direction by not even priming or stretching her canvases, and
instead just laying them horizontally on the floor. And instead of flinging paint onto
a canvas with a paint brush, she just took buckets of paint and poured them directly
onto the floor, letting the paint soak into the canvas. This approach produced fields
of colour that are even, flat and consistent, instead of brushed and textured. Frankenthaler
also inspired many other artists like Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis. These techniques
were revolutionary to many artist because they had come to realize that in addition
to not being restricted by what to paint, they were also not restricted by how to paint.
they were totally no longer bound by the paintbrush or the easel.
Now, you can be a traditionalist and really dislike how painting got this way. You could
say that you don’t consider this type of painting true paintings because these artists
were totally not using traditional painting methods. And fair enough. Many of these artists
themselves, as well as their contemporary art critics also considered what they were
doing to be beyond the realm of painting. But by doing things such as abandoning the
paintbrush, creating two dimensional forms that are shaped and stained in three dimensional
space - these artists blurred the boundaries between painting and sculpture. They also
highlighted notion of colour, shape and space. Even though colour, shape and space have always
been crucial to paintings - they were always kind of just elemental, background components
that were a part of paintings. And these artists put the elements front and centre stage. And
with these breakthroughs - you cannot deny the tremendous artistic possibilities and
creative expressions that were opened up by people like Helen Frankenthaler and Frank
Stella and the subsequent generations of artist that they inspired.
So what do you think? Do you think colour field painters were successful in stripping
their compositions free of external references and context? And does knowing the intent of
the artists affect the way you view and experience the work? Let me know in the comments.
And see you guys next time.
Frank Stella is a painting that was in- is a painting, ha. Frank Stella is a painter
Frank Stella is a painting that was in- oh my god.