Ellsworth Kelly's monochrome canvases redefine the beauty and drama of the single-color process. Color is the actor on this stage, the figure that transfixes the audience's gaze. These colors and shapes become part of the subconscious of the viewer, who feels...
[more]Ellsworth Kelly's monochrome canvases redefine the beauty and drama of the single-color process. Color is the actor on this stage, the figure that transfixes the audience's gaze. These colors and shapes become part of the subconscious of the viewer, who feels the reds, blues, and yellows as emotions. And like emotions, Kelly's works emanate from a vivid interior to interact with and animate the outside world. The containment of the hard-edged canvases reflects the importance of the space surrounding them, imbuing the entire room with the work's concept, vision, and intellect.
Although Kelly's work resembles that of the Minimalists, it actually takes a determined stance against this categorization. His shaped canvases move beyond painting into the realm of sculpture; the canvas is not merely a repository for paint, but an art object itself -- a concept that presages Installation art. He used the same boldly colored, hard-edged techniques with his large freestanding sculptures that often, like his paintings, incorporated the environment as part of the art. Kelly was always very conscious of this idea, explaining, "By removing the content from my work I shifted the visual reality of painting to include the space around it."
Kelly studied art in Paris from 1948 to 1954, when the City of Lights was rediscovering its glory days. Post-war Paris was the nest of European Abstraction and the home for old soldiers of the avant-garde. During these formative years he socialized with the aging Matisse and the likes of Jean Arp, Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miro, and Alexander Calder. The aesthetics he shared with these artists would soon become immensely influential parts of his later work. Matisse shared his affinity for bold, expressive color; Arp, his fascination for chance composition; from Calder, the love of color, geometry, and interaction with space.
Many argue that Kelly missed the style of Abstract Expressionism that was exploding during the early '50s in New York. Although he did not bask in the glory of the Tenth Street School, Kelly was able to concentrate on his own style far from the shadows of the New York gallery scene. The premonitions of Pop were in the air, however, and despite his removal from the movement he followed a parallel technique of simplified canvases and eye-catching boldness. Like his contemporaries Rauschenberg, Johns, Noland, and others, he tried to escape from the confinements of conservative American society, rebelling against order and creating a whole new vision of color and line.
Kelly's work retained elements of several styles, however; it crossed paths with Pollock's angst-driven murals and Rothko's emotional color panels. And it crossed disciplines as well, as Le Corbusier stated in one of Kelly's catalogue essays, "This kind of painting needs the new architecture to go with it."
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