Kenneth Noland in "Color/ Line/Form" exhibition at Rosenbaum Contemporary

Kenneth Noland

Curatorial Essay

By Gabriel Diego Delgado, Assistant Director

Kenneth Noland is an artist who is credited with helping establish the Washington Color School. A pivotal American painter who was also grouped in with the Color Field painters in the 1950’s, then with the Abstract Expressionists in the 1960’s; Noland would later become a renowned figure in the Minimalist movement.

During his vast career, Noland befriended fellow painters like Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis, and studied with mentors, Ilya Bolotowsky and Josef Albers.  

Known for his signature aesthetic of simplified abstract forms, which included targets, stripes, and v –shaped diagonals called chevrons, Noland excelled in minimalist compositions radiating with bold and saturated color choices.

Influenced by Albers, Noland took to the “interaction of colors” mantra. He relied on associations between contrasting and complementing colors to create vibrating edges and dynamic relations. He continued to experiment with the color tones having individual weights, densities, and transparencies – allowing the colors to live on one another, often showcasing colors as physical things with their own properties rather than as an illusionistic reference of space and dimension.

With the transition of circle target paintings to v-shaped patterns, chevrons, Noland was able to further investigate color relations from a side-by-side perspective, instead of being subjective to the infinite circle connotations. Hampered by the circle dominant to all other aspects of the composition, Noland found a symmetrical arrangement that could give him a new perspective on boundaries, both implied and physical. The edges of the canvas began to play a role in the overall scheme of the painting. The triangular point of the “v-shape” nestled on or near the bottom of the canvas kept the viewers’ eye anchored with cognitive directives of painting readership culled from the angular paint lines.

“ I do not like representation in painting”, says Noland, as he tries to keep out all distractions, including allusions -– as quoted from a 2002 article by Grace Glueck in the New York Times titled: No Message, No Story: The Color’s About Color.”

We see an artist void of all coded undercurrents. Noland wants us to appreciate his color choices, not the implied metaphysical and emotional undertones associated with it. A subjective volley of indirect reference often expended by the Abstract Expressionist painters. He is not nursing an unchecked PTSD from WWII or making a Freudian implication of some sort of egotistical homogamy. Noland makes no qualms about what the painting is about: the paint, the shape, and the color.

The chevron was first explored in the 1960’s, and then was reexamined by the artist in future artworks like, “Comet” (1983) and “Songs: Indian Love Call” (1984).

With this newly developed composition, Noland’s choice of symmetry is now the transverse of the strongest compositional element in Renaissance painting, the triangle. Compositionally stable, the painterly surface is now addressed with a fragmentation of movement, various depths, and a spotlight of broken strokes of thick impasto; ridges of application that rises off the surface.

It is often thought that Noland produced the chevron series in direct response to his good colleague, Morris Louis’s “Unfurled” series of diagonal stripe paintings.

With only a few of the large scale paintings in the chevron series, Noland would on move on quite quickly to abandon the diagonal v composition, as it was “no longer true to his feelings…”

Noland’s titles are hard to decipher. What are the influences and context for “Indian Love Call?”  What we do know is that in the 1940’s, Noland was able to study and take classes under acclaimed music composer, John Cage. This is couple that with the fact that longtime colleague, trusted friend and art critic Clement Greenberg had often analyzed the importance of music in art. Now you now have this inherently influential themed guidance directing him to explore avenues of pure art, not representational in any regards.

Greenberg stated, “the advantage of music for modernist painting lay chiefly in the fact that it was an abstract art an art of pure form.”

“I like to think of painting without subject matter as music without words”, Noland once explained of his work at a 1988 lecture at the University of Hartford, Connecticut.

In a modern context, Indian Love Call had a cemented appearance in the 1920’s and 30’s pop culture. "Indian Love Call" was first published as "The Call" and was a popular song from Rose-Marie, a 1924 operetta-style Broadway musical with music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart. Then, musicians, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, performed the song, Indian Love Call, as a duet in the 1936 film version of Rose Marie. It is also rumored to have been a favorite song of President Dwight D. Eisenhower as well.

The other “chevron” in the pair is titled, “Comet”, 1983. With a staunch black background and complimenting colors of purple and yellow, “Comet” dominates the white walled gallery through punches of bold and dynamic color.

“Comet” could possibly be a throwback reference to Jackson Pollock’s “Comet” painting of the same title from 1947. Noland could be giving a nod to one of his contemporary colleagues. As in “Comet” by Pollock, a white streak of paint is painted across the canvas from top left corner to lower right corner; a half chevron, an angular stripe in the midst of the signature splatter painting technique of this “Ab-Ex” master. Pollock’s black hue is dominant to the overall aesthetic, similar to Noland’s black color palette role. 

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