How and Why Did Abstarct Art Movement Edge Begin
"Abstract Classicist painting is hard-edged painting. Forms are finite, flat, rimmed by a difficult, clean edge. These forms are not intended to evoke in the spectator whatsoever recollections of specific shapes he may accept encountered in some other connection. They are autonomous shapes, sufficient unto themselves every bit shapes."
"The form of my painting is the content."
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"A film is a flat surface with paint on it - nada more."
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"Even my most recent paintings, my abstract paintings, essentially are dealing with instability of color, instability of line, to make the things move psychologically."
"The structure making is of prime importance. Until this is correct nothing further can be done. Subsequently the motion picture works in line the shapes become colors. I respond the hunch as it comes."
Summary of Hard-edge Painting
Hard-border painting is a tendency in late 1950s and 1960s art that is closely related to Post-painterly abstraction and Color Field Painting. Information technology describes an abstract style that combines the clear limerick of geometric abstraction with the intense colour and bold, unitary forms of Color Field Painting. Although it was showtime identified with Californian artists, today the phrase is used to describe one of the most distinctive tendencies in abstract painting throughout the United States in the 1960s.
Key Ideas & Accomplishments
- Difficult-edge abstraction was part of a general tendency to move away from the expressive qualities of gestural abstraction. Many painters too sought to avoid the shallow, post-Cubist space of Willem de Kooning'due south piece of work, and instead adopted the open fields of color seen in the work of Barnett Newman.
- Hard-edge painting is known for its economy of form, fullness of color, impersonal execution, and smooth surface planes.
- The term "hard-edge abstraction" was devised past Californian art critic Jules Langsner, and was initially intended to title a 1959 exhibition that included four West Declension artists - Karl Benjamin, John McLaughlin, Frederick Hammersley and Lorser Feitelson. Although, later, the fashion was often referred to as "California hard-edge," and these four artists became synonymous with the movement, Langsner eventually decided to title the show 4 Abstract Classicists (1959), as he felt that the style marked a classical plow away from the romanticism of Abstract Expressionism.
Overview of Hard-edge Painting
In the tardily 1950s, the Californian art critic, poet and psychiatrist Jules Langsner began to observe an emerging trend in abstruse art that stemmed from Color Field Painting, yet tended to employ clean lines and contrasting hues. He chose to highlight this by staging an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Fine art, in 1959, which included artists Frederick Hammersley, Karl Benjamin, John McLaughlin and Lorser Feitelson. It was titled Four Abstract Classicists.
Key Artists
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Ellsworth Kelly is an American Color Field and Hard edge painter. Kelly got his starting time in the tardily 1950s with showings at the Betty Parsons Gallery and the Whitney Museum. His work often consists of shaped canvases, simple geometric shapes, and large panels of uniform color.
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Frank Stella is an American artist whose geometric paintings and shaped canvases underscore the idea of the painting as object. A major influence on Minimalism, his iconic works include nested blackness and white stripes and concentric, angular one-half-circles in vivid colors.
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Kenneth Noland was an American painter who helped pioneer the Color-field painting movement in the 1960s. His most famous works consist of circular ripples of paint poured straight onto the sail.
Do Not Miss
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A tendency inside Abstract Expressionism, singled-out from gestural abstraction, Color Field painting was developed past Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford However in the late 1940s, and developed further by Helen Frankenthaler and others. Information technology is characterized past big fields of color and an absence of any figurative motifs, and often expresses a yearning for transcendence and the infinite.
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Post-painterly abstraction was a term adult by critic Clement Greenberg in 1964 to draw a diverse range of abstract painters who rejected the gestural styles of the Abstract Expressionists and favored instead what he chosen "openness or clarity." Painters as different as Ellsworth Kelly and Helen Frankenthaler were described past the term. Some employed geometric class, others veils of stained colour.
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Suprematism, the invention of Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, was i of the earliest and most radical developments in abstract art. Inspired by a desire to experiment with the language of abstract class, and to isolate fine art'southward barest essentials, its artists produced ascetic abstractions that seemed almost mystical. It was an important influence on Constructivism.
Important Fine art and Artists of Hard-edge Painting
Black Pillars (1957)
Considered ane of Benjamin's signature paintings, Black Pillars has won new renown after becoming a centerpiece of the recent traveling exhibition Nativity of the Cool, organized by the Orange Canton Museum of Art. Benjamin'south utilize of somber dejection, his sleek forms and shadow play are now considered emblematic of mail service-war American style. Although some of Benjamin's colour forms in Black Pillars remember the course of erstwhile tv set screens, the creative person was doing nix more playing with opposing colors and forms to create a visually engaging picture.
Opposing #15 (1959)
Hammersley'due south Opposing #xv contains the visual symmetry often associated with post-painterly abstraction and Colour Field Painting, but it lacks any sort of color interaction or residuum. Hammersley pitted contrasting colors (mainly primaries) against each other, forth with basic geometric forms that seem to have no business interacting. The end result displays 1 of the defining characteristics of many hard-edge paintings, which was the presence of rich and saturated color, clean lines, and flat surface, and a disregard for relationships between the colors that comprise the painting. All this suggests the shift in interests that took place every bit Color Field Painting ceded to Post-painterly abstraction; preoccupation with the expressive power of color gave way to interest in optical phenomena.
Dichotomic Arrangement (1959)
Feitelson's Dichotomic Organisation could exist called a difficult-edged interpretation of a Clyfford Still painting. The abrupt colour forms and hot-vs.-cold themes recall However's own brand of Color Field Painting, while Feitelson'due south sense of dimension all make this a very unique work in the catalog of hard-border paintings of the tardily 1950s and early on 1960s. Jules Langsner once referred to Feitelson's work equally containing "cypher ambiguous or fuzzily subjective." In other words, Langsner perceived Feitelson to be an artist with a stunningly clear vision, which was to create captivating art without whatsoever indication of the creative person'south perspective.
Useful Resources on Hard-edge Painting
Books
websites
articles
video clips
More
Books
The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this folio. These too suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that tin be found and purchased via the internet.
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Colourfield Painting: Minimal, Cool, Hard Edge, Serial and Post-Painterly Abstruse Fine art of the Sixties to the Present Our Pick
By Stuart Morris
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Lorser Feitelson and the Invention of Hard Edge Painting, 1945-1965
By Lorser Feitelson
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Visual puns and hard-border poems: Works by Frederick Hammersley
By Joseph Traugott
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Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles Art, 1945-1980
By Rebecca Peabody, Andrew Perchuk, Glenn Phillips, Rani Singh, Lucy Bradnock / Give-and-take of Hard-Edge Painting Within the Context of Tardily xxth Century Art in California
Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf
Edited and published by The Fine art Story Contributors
"Difficult-border Painting Move Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf
Edited and published by The Fine art Story Contributors
Available from:
Start published on 21 January 2012. Updated and modified regularly
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Source: https://www.theartstory.org/movement/hard-edge-painting/