Like Ellie, I’m feeling the geometry love today.  Maybe it was all those tasty rhombi…

I was originally going to write about Andy Gilmore, who is a damn talented illustrator with a flair for geometry and color.  But when I was doing my research, I started thinking about another artist who not only had his shapes and colors in check, but also was one of the first and foremost artists of the Color Field post-war abstraction movement, Kenneth Noland.

Unfortunately, in doing some research on Noland, I found that he just recently passed away last month in Maine at the age of 85 of cancer.  This news was especially shocking to me as I have a very close relationship with Bill Noland, Kenneth’s son, who was my absolute favorite Visual Arts professor in college and to this day I remain close with and work with; he’s truly one of my most influential mentors of my arts/design career (and certainly very talented photographer, sculpturist, and video artist in his own right).

Kenneth’s work usually falls into four categories, chevrons, stripes, shaped canvases, and, perhaps most famously, his circles or targets.  However they all are characterized by the Color Field painting style, one which placed emphasis on large, flat areas of uniform color and process and form over expressionistic brush strokes or action or gesture.

Color was his primary weapon, often blending cool and hot colors effortlessly, but always with bold intention.  Form was his secondary tool – always deferring to the pureness of shape and process.  Of his commitment to his tools, NY Times art critic Hilton Kramer, in his review of Noland’s 1977 retrospective at the Guggenheim, wrote, “Mr. Noland has been consistent and unvarying — not to say single-minded — in his artistic purpose, which has been to fill the canvas surface with a pictorial experience of pure color.”

His legacy lives on in artists like Andy Gilmore, whether they realize it or not.

Tags: Abstract, Art, color, Color Field, eulogy, form, Kenneth Noland, Paintings, RIP