Color-field abstraction long ago ceased to be fashionable, but in the Sixties it was one of the most admired movements in modern American art, and Kenneth Noland, who died yesterday at the age of eighty-five, was one of its most celebrated practitioners.
To his admirers, Noland’s circles and chevrons were as endlessly and subtly varied as Giorgio Morandi’s jugs and bottles. Clement Greenberg, his greatest critical admirer, spoke of how Noland was “not interested in circles as such, but in concentricity and color,” going on to say that he used those elements “for the sake of feeling, and as vehicles of feeling.” As time went by and fashion changed, fewer people responded to Noland’s work, but he continued to be regarded as a master by those who shared his fecund fascination with the expressive power of pure color.
I have a passion for Noland’s paintings, and four years ago ago I was lucky enough to acquire Circle I (II-3), a 1978 monoprint on handmade paper that I wrote about here. I love everything in the Teachout Museum, but that particular piece is a special treasure, and since I’m in Florida and Circle I (II-3) is in Manhattan, I thought I’d post a snapshot of it in order to remind myself of how beautiful it is.
Alas, I never met the man who made it, but if I had, I would have done my best to tell him how much his art meant–and means–to me.
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
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