Download Color Field painting used greatly reduced formats

Color Field painting used greatly reduced formats, repetition, and a
highly articulated and psychological use of color.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE [ edit ]
Differentiate Color Field painting from other contemporary abstract art such as Abstract
Expressionism
KEY POINTS [ edit ]
Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1950s
and 1960s. It was closely linked to Abstract Expressionism, Post-Painterly Abstraction,
and Lyrical Abstraction.
Distinct from the emotional energy and gestural surface marks and paint handling of Abstract
Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Color Field painting initially appeared to be cool and
austere.
The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action in favour of an overall
consistency of form and process, with color itself becoming the subject matter.
Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, and Morris Louis
are among the many artists who used Color Field techniques in their work.
Color Field painters revolutionized the way paint could be effectively applied, through use of
acrylic paint and techniques such as staining and spraying.
TERMS [ edit ]
abstract expressionism
An American genre of modern art that used improvised techniques to generate highly abstract
forms.
action painting
A genre of modern art in which the paint is dribbled, splashed or poured onto the canvas to
obtain a spontaneous and totally abstract image.
lyrical abstraction
A type of abstract painting related to Abstract Expressionism; in use since the 1940s.
Give us feedback on this content: FULL TEXT [edit ]
Color Field painting is
astyle ofabstractpainting that emerged in
New York City during the 1950s and
1960s. It was inspired by
European modernism and closely related
toAbstract Expressionism, while many of
its notable early proponents were among
the pioneering Abstract Expressionists.
Color Field is characterized primarily by
large fields of flat, solid color spread
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across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane.
The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action in favour of an
overall consistency of form and process, with color itself becoming the subject matter.
Taking its example from other European modernists like Joan Miró, the Color Field
movement encompasses several decades from the mid-20th century through the early
21st century. Color Field painting actually encompasses three separate but related generations
of painters, commonly grouped into abstractexpressionism, post-painterly abstraction,
and lyrical abstraction. Some of the artists made works in all three eras that relate to all of the
three styles.
The focus of attention in the world of contemporary art began to shift from Paris to New York
after World War II and the development of American abstract expressionism. During the late
1940s and early 1950s, Clement Greenberg was the first art critic to suggest and identify a
dichotomy between differing tendencies within the Abstract Expressionist canon—especially
between Action Painting and what Greenberg termed "Post-Painterly Abstraction" (today
known as Color Field). By the late 1950s and early 1960s, young artists began to break away
stylistically from abstract expressionism, experimenting with new ways of handling paint and
color. Moving away from gesture and angst (such as the violence and anxiety of Action
painting) in favor of clear surfaces and seemingly calmer language of color, artists in Great
Britain, Canada and the United States used formats of stripes, targets and simple geometric
patterns.
Color Field painting is related to Post-painterly abstraction,Suprematism, Abstract
Expressionism, Hard-edge painting and Lyrical Abstraction. It initially referred to a
particular type of abstract expressionism, especially the work of Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still,
Barnett Newman , Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb and several series of paintings by
Joan Miró. Color Field painting sought to rid art of superfluous rhetoric. Artists like Morris
Louis, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland , Friedel Dzubas, Frank Stella , and others often used
greatly reduced formats, with drawing essentially simplified to repetitive and regulated
systems, basic references to nature, and a highly articulated and psychological use of color. In
general these artists eliminated overt recognizable imagery in favor of abstraction.
Frank Stella, Harran II, 1967
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Frank Stella was a significant figure in the emergence of
Minimalism, Post­Painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting. His shaped canvases of the 1960s
revolutionized abstract painting.
'Beginning', magna on canvas painting by Kenneth Noland, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,
1958
Color Field painting is characterized by simple geometric forms and repetitive, regulated systems.
Paintings of this genre have proven to be both sensual and deeply expressive albeit in a different way
from gestural Abstract expressionism.
Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?, 1966, by Barnett Newman
Color Field painting is characterized by simple geometric forms and repetitive, regulated systems.
Paintings of this genre have proven to be both sensual and deeply expressive, albeit in a different way
from gestural Abstract Expressionism.
Certain artists quoted references to past or present art, but in general Color Field painting
presents abstraction as an end in itself. In pursuing this direction of modern art, these artists
wanted to present each painting as one unified, cohesive,monolithic image often within
series' of related types. Distinct from the emotional energy and gestural surface marks and
paint handling of abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning,
Color Field painting initially appeared to be cool and austere. Color Field painters eschew the
individual mark in favor of large, flat, stained, and soaked areas of color, considered to be the
essential nature of visual abstraction along with the actual shape of the canvas. However,
Color Field painting has proven to be both sensual and deeply expressive, albeit in a different
way from gestural abstract expressionism.
An important distinction between Color Field painting and abstract expressionism is the
paint handling. The most basic defining technique of painting is application of paint, and the
Color Field painters revolutionized the way paint could be effectively applied. Water-soluble,
artist-quality acrylic paints first became commercially available in the early 1960s, coinciding
with the Color Field movement as these paints could would sink and hold fast into raw
canvas.The most common applications were stain painting (where artists would mix and
dilute their paint in buckets or coffee cans, making a fluid liquid, then pour it onto raw
unprimed canvas, drawing shapes and areas as they stained); spray painting (a technique
using a spray gun to create large expanses and fields of color sprayed across the canvas); and
the use of stripes.