Target Practice

The American art scene lost one of the great, yet forgotten artists of the twentieth century last Tuesday with the passing of Kenneth Noland at 85 years of age. One of the Color Field painters, the abstract art movement christened by influential critic Clement Greenberg as the true successor to the Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Noland enjoyed his greatest success in the late 1950s and early 1960s, only to become collateral damage when Greenberg tumbled from the apex of the critical world and he and the rest of the Color Field painters became targets, too. (Noland's ") Please venture over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Target Practice."

Oh, Behave

Mike Myers’ Austin Powers character spoofs the days of “Swinging London,” when outrageous behavior was the norm, but his outrageousness isn’t far from the real deal. In the middle of that swinging time was one of the most intriguing and fun artists of the twentieth century—Peter Blake. Born June 25, 1935, Blake was born just in time to soak up the teen-targeted popular culture of post-World War II Britain. Combining such “low brow” pop with “high brow” fine art technique and history, Blake created such works as Got a Girl (above, from 1960-1961). The faces of teen idols such as Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson appear in a band across the top above a series of red, white, and blue chevrons that recall the work of Blake’s American contemporary Kenneth Noland. Just as America imported to England young hunks through movies and music, it imported the latest trends in abstract art, such as Noland’s pieces. Blake binds the two imports together and creates a pastiche of cultures clashing. By putting Elvis et al. at the top and Noland on the bottom, Blake flips the idea of “high” versus “low” on its head. Blake would take this pastiche style to its greatest extreme in his design for for the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which mixes history, literature, art, and music together in a dazzling, ground-breaking display.

In addition to celebrating stars who “got the girl” in Got the Girl, Blake “got” his own girl in Tuesday (above, from 1961). Two photos of the actress and early 1960s teen sex symbol Tuesday Weld appear above the simple banner of “TUESDAY.” Blake plays off of the instant, one-name name recognition of pop culture and modern media in broadcasting the actress’ first name. Tuesday in many ways is the companion piece to the male stars of Got a Girl. To Blake’s male perspective, the young male stars blend together in their similar hairstyles and chiseled features. In contrast, Tuesday Weld strikes the male viewer as unique and special. If Blake had been a woman, the two compositions might have been reversed. Blake again places a Noland-esque abstract arrangement of color beneath the pop culture reference, but I wonder if Blake also alludes here to the celebrity-celebrating boxes of Joseph Cornell. Cornell, also a omnivorous consumer of all strata of culture, created semi-shrines to Lauren Bacall and other starlets of the 1940s. The boxlike arrangement of Blake’s Tuesday leads me to believe that he’s having a little fun in “borrowing” Cornell’s style while modifying it to his own taste and time.

Blake has become a revered figure in British art, but that doesn’t mean that the old lion’s been tamed. In The Meeting, or Have a Nice Day, Mr. Hockney (above, from 1981-1983), Blake plays off of Gustave Courbet’s 1854 The Meeting, or Bonjour Monsieur Courbet. Blake recasts artist David Hockney as Courbet and himself and Howard Hodgkin as the fawning patrons. Blake and Hodgkin seem out of place in their heavy clothes, but Hockney, the transplanted British artist in his new California habitat, wears informal, seasonal clothing. Behind the artists, Blake places all the stereotypical accessories of California living—palm trees, garish advertising, and beautiful blondes on roller skates. Blake is one of my favorite artists of the twentieth century for his incorrigible yen for mixing up the history of art with the pop culture of the time with equal respect for both worlds yet a sense of overall irreverence. You have to respect a man who grew up never growing up.

Getting in Shape

The greatest argument for going out and seeing paintings in person is the insufficiency of reproduction, especially when it comes to modern art. Barnett Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis seems small and paltry in a book or on a computer screen, but when you stand before it you are overcome with a world of red-hued emotion. Likewise, the works of Kenneth Noland suffer in reproduction. Born April 10, 1924, Noland sometimes finds himself linked with Abstract expressionism, perhaps in his kinship with Newman, but is more often grouped with Color field painters such as Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler. Noland’s work can be broken down into fairly self-contained sections, beginning with the circle paintings he did from 1956 through 1963, such as Beginning (above, from 1958). Although they might remind one of Jasper Johns’ target series, Noland’s circles focus on the interplay of color rather than the repetition of familiar shapes. Many of Noland’s circles seem almost mechanical in reproduction, where the subtle touches of the human hand are lost, much like the feathery edges of Newman’s “zips.” Beginnings shows more clearly Noland’s gamesmanship with the boundaries of the circle. Noland uses circles and shapes to emphasize the way that shapes contain or set boundaries and then breaks out of that containment. The colors in Noland’s circles and other shapes interplay to create a mood while simultaneously push beyond the canvas into the viewer’s imagination.

In the mid-1960s, Noland shifted from circles to chevrons, such as those found in Blue Veil (above, from 1963). Another common motif structure for Noland during this period was stripes, which essentially just unbent the chevrons. Both series again explore the way that colors can be arranged to create a mood. Blue Veil stands out from many other Noland paintings in that the dark background evokes feelings in strong contrast to the white backgrounds and brighter colors of other works. Noland cites Paul Klee as a great influence on his approach to color, but you could make a similar argument for the influence of Matisse. Noland could then be seen as a Fauve minus the beastliness but with the same aggressively innovative approach to experimenting with color’s capacity to bypass the mind and touch the heart. By eliminating the recognizable imagery of Matisse and others and going straight into abstract color, Noland defies rational explanation while inviting irrational responses.

By the 1970s, Noland went beyond putting shapes on canvas and began to shape the canvas itself into irregular delivery systems for his ideas. In Moon Ray (above, from 1976), Noland paints a series of stripes radiating from a point and physically stretching the usually square or rectangular canvas into something unique to the composition. Again, form follows function for Noland. Where circles and chevrons once supplied containers for him to overfill with color, the dimensions of the canvas itself now bend to his will. Ellsworth Kelly, Noland’s almost exact contemporary, similarly uses irregularly shaped canvases to express an idea, but more often using a single color, such as his Lake II, which “steals” a lake right out of a Cezanne. Noland experimented with many other shapes, some of which resembled surfboards. Still active, Noland continues to work the edges and surf conceptually through the very idea of painting, testing the boundaries and yet, unfortunately, rarely recognized for how he helped shape modern art.