Fields of Amber Waves

Installation view. Artist on left: Kenneth Noland, “This,” 1958-59, acrylic on canvas, 82 x 82 in. (left); “That,” 1958-59, acrylic on canvas, 82 x 82 in. (right). Both works collection of Audrey and David Mirbish, Toronto. Artist on right: Hans Hofmann, “Iris,” 1964-65, oil on canvas, 72 x 84 in. Private collection. Photograph by Steven Brooke.

By BRUCE HELANDER July 19, 2024

“Glory of the World: Color Field Painting (1950s to 1983),” is the title of the current exhibition at the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale (through August 25, 2024), is a remarkable and historic display that explores American color field painting from the early 1950s to 1983. Curated and organized by the museum’s distinguished executive director Bonnie Clearwater, former director (appropriately) of the Rothko Foundation, this collection of mostly large-scale works chronicles and celebrates the creativity and innate aesthetic and influential principles of historic color field non-narrative compositions. Legendary figures of this movement on view include such renowned artists as Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Robert Motherwell, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, Alma Thomas and Frank Stella, among others.  

My very first, instant impression of this ambitious survey was discovering in separate cavern-like exhibition rooms a multitude of delightful painted flashes of huge, energetic surfaces. This collection of images initially was slightly reminiscent of the rural landscapes of southern Minnesota where I grew up prior to attending the Rhode Island School of Design. Frank Bowling’s sectioned mute painting, “Yonder II” (1972) immediately connected with these childhood memories, as did Hans Hofmann’s “Iris” (1964). As a young artist I was fascinated by the aesthetic properties surrounding acres of agricultural sections observed from the top of a hillside, which appeared as a living, colorful, abstract quilted blanket of expansive square shapes divided by meandering dirt roads. A subsequent mile-high experience looking down from a crop duster biplane made a permanent impression on me, as I could finally see for miles a veritable checkerboard of appealing textures and ordinary colorful open fields, which formed an earthen canvas that seemed to go on forever. Flowing amber waves of grain took on a new perception. Farmers annually rotate their fields with a wide variety of plants for better production and pollination. The results provide unexpected colorful geometric designs that accentuate square fields sown in an organic palette of green peas, yellow sunflowers, red sugar beets, blueberries, orange pumpkins and yellow bales of hay patterned into one gigantic, quilted landscape that offers a seemingly endless vanishing point background.

Installation view. Artist on left: Jules Olitski, “Yellow Looshe,” 1968, water-based acrylic on canvas, 81 x 260 in. Private collection. Artist on right: Helen Frankenthaler, “Hint from Bassano,” 1973, acrylic on canvas, 85 x 227 in. Collection of Audrey and David Mirbish, Toronto. Photograph by Steven Brooke.

Two handsome works in the show are also coincidently reminiscent of my early years of environmental discovery, as in Jules Olitski’s massive horizontal painting that might be considered a bright yellow sunset and Helen Frankenthaler’s adjacent horizontal composition that could be interpreted as storm clouds above mountains below. However, any visual pictorial connections are just happenstance, as there are no narrative elements whatsoever as examples in this memorable show. Though it could be said, in a subtle way, that nature is always there to encourage and inspire innovation in works of art. The more you look, the more you see, and the more you learn, as is clear in this marvelous show.

Early picture-making since the Stone Age used techniques that endure to this day. Paints were usually laid down on a small tablet or a slice of wood. Stretched canvases followed years later. Early on, artists generally would make their own pigments using a handmade concoction of oils and ground minerals such as azurite and malachite, plants such as saffron, berry juices, beeswax and Brazil wood, which were ground into powders and mixed with egg yolks to bind the solution. The chemistry was complicated, and the results were haphazard and uneven. But not forever!

The expansion and explosion of large-scale color field painting coincided with early technological advances in waterborne acrylics in the 1950s and ‘60s, and the synthetic pigment manufacturing trials of paint companies Bocour and Golden acrylics. Their new formulas, which could be mixed and diluted with tap water, made large-scale paintings practical and possible, as large quantities of colorful liquid medium could finally be poured directly onto the surface of the canvas. Also, generous saturated splashes and deliberate drips were sometimes used that promoted revolutionary trials with historic results. The new oil-based paints were particularly suitable for applying directly to the canvas and gave artists the freedom to investigate and paint quickly and with intense hues and sharp edges without having to wait out the long drying times of oils.

Installation view. Artist on left: Frank Stella, “Fortin de las Flores,” 1966. Artist on right: Jack Bush, “Pinched Orange,” 1964 (left); “January Reds,” 1966 (right). Photograph by Steven Brooke.

For centuries there always was the notion of landing on the moon, but it was something impossible to fathom until engineering and jet fuel were invented. During the transition in the art world from impressionism to abstraction the idea of diluting traditional oil-based paint was impossible to consider for creating canvases. As acrylic water-based paint was developed it became the creative flexible ammunition necessary for soaking a canvas in a non-flammable medium that finally allowed an artist like Helen Frankenthaler to make the very first groundbreaking poured experiments in contemporary art, which led a group of other artists to follow.

But it wasn’t always that simple. Around 30 million years ago, there was no such thing as eyesight. Not from birds or bees or humankind. Some species of our ancestors began to develop four classes of opsin genes, which play an important role in vision and pigment regulation, giving them the ability to see and eventually enjoy the full-color spectrum of visible light. Human eyes are fit for a purpose and as such are relatively straightforward. We don’t have the field of vision of a prey animal, nor yet the visual acuity of the predator. Gorillas and chimpanzees have human color vision and believe it or not, human eyes are still evolving, so let’s not monkey around with progress.

With evolution finally handing down 20/20 vision along with an ability to think and to conceptualize theory and document imagination, it was a natural extension for trailblazing artists to utilize their talents in creativity. First attempts were obviously primitive gestures, like simple rock carvings in a cave wall, face paint and body decorations. But as time passed, the human spirit grew into a dynamic force that eventually brought us to depictions of landscapes and portraiture. Eventually, one original invention multiplied into a clever maze of picture-making that eventually motivated artists to seek new adventuresome avenues in modern art. We can thank Paul Cézanne, who was called “the father of modern art” because he showed how free art could really be. He encouraged artists to explore color, shape and space without needing to make sense in a traditional, narrative, realistic way. There is a courageous trail of heritage painters like Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and later colorful painters like Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois, Henri Rousseau, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. These artists paved the way for abstract expressionists such as Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock as well as pioneers of the New York School of modern art, which included Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, and whose works were characterized by large areas of flat, solid color designed to have an emotional impact on the viewer.

Installation view. Lawrence Poons, “The Call,” 1973, acrylic on canvas, 108 ½ x 192 in. (left) Private collection; “Big Purple,” 1972, acrylic on canvas, 98 x 92 in. (right) Collection of Audrey and David Mirbish, Toronto. Photograph by Steven Brooke.

In the pecking order of artists’ evolutional journey during the late 1950s, a second generation of distinguished American expressionists, including Helen Frankenthaler (credited with inventing stained canvas), Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski, established a more impersonal, more formalist style of color field, devoid of all emotional and spiritual elements.

The essence of this remarkable exhibition follows a logical conclusion that color field painting continues to be an important component in the history of modern art. The careful selection of artists, images and their placement in this significant show demonstrate a thoughtful cohesiveness of image and idea. Suffice it to say all the outstanding artists’ works in this memorable exhibition are full of character, intrigue and layers of saturated color. Each painter has a recognizable idiosyncratic style that came from laborious experiments in a new frontier of non-narrative picture-making packed with multiple layers of color. The works here are often characterized by fields of flat, solid medium that can envelop the spectator when seen at close quarters while deliberately avoiding suggestive or identifiable shapes. Form and background are one. The paintings illustrated here are seen as a “field” rather than a window that allows the viewer to acquire a more impersonal formalist perspective and appreciation of color.  As a reinterpretation and extension of abstract expressionism’s DNA, which became devoid of all emotional and spiritual elements, the images represented deserve their sanctified place in art history. WM