Ellsworth Kelly and the complexity of simplicity
Last weekend my husband and I went to the Art Dealer’s Assoc. show at the Armory in NYC. This show was a collection of well-heeled dealers from around the country with work to sell. Actually, I was a bit disappointed that most of what was available were well known artists of the 20th century. Don’t get me wrong, seeing Klimt, Matisse, Picasso, Avery, Moore, Sheile and others was certainly wonderful, but I wanted to see something new and exciting. I guess that wasn’t for this crowd.
I did see a lovely little Picasso that would look great in my house (and cost more than we originally paid for the house) but alas, I really don’t have any more wall space so I had to pass it by.
There was one gallery selling the work of two artists whose kinetic sculptures were extremely exiting and interesting. But the one I will focus on in this post is Ellsworth Kelly, represented by more than one participating gallery.
Ellsworth Kelly is known as a minimalist, but that sells him short. I suppose I understand the generalization that his work is minimalist in that it is about color and space–both positive and negative space–and his work is strong, hard-edged and uncomplicated. I would call him a purest. Like the line drawings of Picasso, his seemingly simple compositions are deceptively complex in his understanding of color, shape, and abstractionism. His saturated colors heighten the power of his work. But more than anything else, Ellsworth Kelly’s work is about contrast, and the tension between contrasting concepts.
The geometry of this piece cannot be denied. The negative space is as important as the two imposing shapes, one curved and one with a hard corner. The red and green vibrate against each other, while the strong blue makes its own statement. Because the colors are all highly saturated and of equal value, this is a piece that is “in your face” and has tremendous impact. The contrasting colors, red and green; the contrasting shapes–rounded and square. The way the pieces come off the edge at the top of the work create the contrast between the horizontal (restful) format and the vertical “reaching to escape the top” of those shapes.
In the same color palette as the first piece, this piece has an entirely different sensibility. The vertical format is more energized than the horizontal plane of the piece above it, but is contrasted by the horizontal shapes occupying the surface. Here we also see the soft vs the hard geometric shape against the green (contrast, again), with the same visual vibration. The blue shape seems to come almost to a point but not quite, drawing the eye to the edge of the work and (in our brain) beyond.
I love this piece. The strength and the movement are magnificent. That the artist can convey such a powerful image with only two lines of negative space is amazing. Like the blue shape in the piece above, the white shape falls off the edge of the canvas, forcing the viewer to extend the art into the space around it. I could look at this piece for hours. Art in its purest form.
But the pieces that I find most interesting by Kelly are his pieces that explore the notion of randomness. I am sure that I relate to these as they are so close to one of the roots of my own art–traditional quilting. I doubt that this is what Kelly had in mind when he created pieces like these:
How like a quilt is this piece? Although the artist was working with the notion of randomly placed color it is so much more than that. The use of so much black and white provides a strong contrast of light and dark values, while the colors dance across the surface. I love the geometry that is created in the white areas, and on closer inspection, the randomness is not as random as one might first think. The few gray blocks are always next to a black one; as are the red and orange blocks. With the exception of just a few cool colored blocks which draw the eye down a jagged line through the center, almost every color is attached to both a black and a white square. To me this looks more like what I always describe in my teaching as “controlled random” which means that the look is random but is carefully manipulated to move the eye around the surface of the work.
Probably my very favorite Kelly piece is this one–”brushstrokes cut into 49 pieces and arranged by chance”. The strong contrast of the dark against the light (not quite black and not quite white), the thickness and thinness of the lines, the magnificent movement around the surface all come together in a piece that reminds me of quilting, but is so much more. This is a piece that is about not only randomness, but form, line, contrast and the complexity of simplicity.
Likewise, this piece, “study for meshers” has the same quilt-like qualities. I can almost see the randomly pieced strips of fabrics cut up into squares and rearranged. But what is so successful here as art is the wonderful array of shapes that are formed by the random mixing of the squares, where the ends of the rectangles fall allowing the eye a place to rest, and the one curved shape with the point that is almost lost in the sea of rectangular shapes. The saturated but cool colors feel restful while the movement has such energy. Yet another study in contrast.
Similar in construction but oh so different is this piece done in warm tones. The subtle difference in value provides a much more nuanced study of the negative and positive spaces. Arranged so that they appear to be more horizontal than random, this piece does not dance so much as it flows from one side to the other. the block of color at the edge provides beautiful composition by solidly grounding the edge of the work. Here the contrast between the two colors is softer, and the horizontal movement is the restful element while the warm colors provide the energy. I have never seen this work in person, so I am not sure if the lighter areas on the two sides of the piece are intentional or the result of photographic reflection. It does give the illusion that this is not a rectangular shape, but that the edges are fraying–and interesting contrast to the hard-edges inside the work.
Hardly a minimalist, there is so much to learn from Ellsworth Kelly and his seemingly simplistic abstractions.
Go out and look at art today!!
Tags: abstraction, contrast, cool colors, Ellsworth Kelly, saturated colors, warm colors
