Kenneth Noland "Twin Planes," 1969

Twin Planes, 1969; Signed, dated, and numbered '193/200 K. Noland 5/5/69' in ink (on the reverse support); Serigraph on canvas laminated to board; Published by Sarah Lawrence Art Press and Chiron Press, New York, with their inkstamps on the reverse.  Framed using a light white washed wood frame and a linen canvas liner; Image 6¼ x 58¾", Frame 9 1/4 x 61 3/4"

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The famous art critic Professor Meyer Shapiro made a distinction between the objects in a painting and the subject matter.  This allows for an understanding that just because a painting does not have recognizable figurative objects, it does not necessarily follow that there is no subject matter.  Shapiro's statement can be applied to the abstract artist Kenneth Noland.  Noland was part of an art movement, dubbed by the art critic Clement Greenberg in 1964, as post-painterly abstraction.  Over time other terms and categories emerged, and he along with his contemporaries (Gene Davis, Friedel Dzubas, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella, etc.) were further grouped by art critics and museum curators into minimalism, hard-edge painting, lyrical abstraction, and color field painting.

Detail of "Twin Planes," 1969

This work, "Twin Planes" from 1969, is a wonderful example of Noland at his best!  Kenneth Noland worked in series, meaning that the structure that was used to compose his color paintings was relegated to a defined format.  The first format to emerge in the late 1950's were the circle paintings followed in the early 1960's by the chevrons.  This work is from the strip series, which started mid to late 1960's.  Although lacking the traditional objects of a landscape, this work has landscape as it's subject matter.  The width and color of the horizontal stripes implies the green foreground with the alternating pink and unpainted canvas as a horizon line.  The sky and clouds read as pale blue mixed with the lazy white clouds and rays of yellow-orange sunlight shining through.  There are a total of nineteen horizontal lines making up the composition, made up of both painted stripes and unpainted canvas.  The experience and feeling of a landscape is conveyed with simple lines, without the classical features of easel painting.

Edition number, signature, date, and publisher on verso.

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