Color Field - Color Field Movement

Color Field Movement

By the late 1950s and early 1960s young artists began to break away stylistically from abstract expressionism; experimenting with new ways of making pictures; and new ways of handling paint and color. In the early 1960s several and various new movements in abstract painting were closely related to each other, and superficially were categorized together; although they turned out to be profoundly different in the long run. Some of the new styles and movements that appeared in the early 1960s as responses to abstract expressionism were called: Washington Color School, Hard-edge painting, Geometric abstraction, Minimalism, and Color Field.

Gene Davis also was a painter known especially for paintings of vertical stripes of color, like Black Grey Beat, 1964, and he also was a member of the group of abstract painters in Washington DC during the 1960s known as the Washington Color School. The Washington painters were among the most prominent of the mid-century Color Field painters.

The artists associated with the Color Field movement during the 1960s were moving away from gesture and angst in favor of clear surfaces and gestalt. During the early to mid-1960s Color Field painting was the term used to describe the work of artists like Anne Truitt, John McLaughlin, Sam Francis, Sam Gilliam, Thomas Downing, Ellsworth Kelly, Paul Feeley, Friedel Dzubas, Jack Bush, Howard Mehring, Gene Davis, Mary Pinchot Meyer, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Goodnough, Ray Parker, Al Held, Emerson Woelffer, David Simpson, and others whose works were formerly related to second generation abstract expressionism; and also to younger artists like Larry Poons, Ronald Davis, Larry Zox, John Hoyland, Walter Darby Bannard and Frank Stella. All were moving in a new direction away from the violence and anxiety of Action painting toward a new and seemingly calmer language of color.

Although the term Color Field is associated with Clement Greenberg, Greenberg actually preferred to use the term Post-Painterly Abstraction. In 1964, Clement Greenberg curated an influential exhibition that traveled the country called Post-painterly abstraction. The exhibition expanded the definition of color field painting. Color Field painting clearly pointed toward a new direction in American painting, away from abstract expressionism. In 2007 curator Karen Wilkin curated an exhibition called Color As Field:American Painting 1950-1975 that traveled to several museums throughout the United States. The exhibition showcased several artists representing two generations of Color Field painters.

In 1970 painter Jules Olitski said:

I don't know what Color Field painting means. I think it was probably invented by some critic, which is okay, but I don't think the phrase means anything. Color Field painting? I mean, what is color? Painting has to do with a lot of things. Color is among the things it has to do with. It has to do with surface. It has to do with shape, It has to do with feelings which are more difficult to get at.

Jack Bush was a Canadian abstract expressionist painter, born in Toronto, Ontario in 1909. He was a member of Painters Eleven, the group founded by William Ronald in 1954 to promote abstract painting in Canada, and was soon encouraged in his art by the American art critic Clement Greenberg. With encouragement from Greenberg, Bush became closely tied to two movements that grew out of the efforts of the abstract expressionists: Color Field Painting and Lyrical Abstraction. His painting Big A is an example of his color field paintings of the late 1960s.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s Frank Stella was a significant figure in the emergence of Minimalism, Post-Painterly Abstraction and Color Field painting. His shaped canvases of the 1960s like Harrah II, 1967, revolutionized abstract painting. One of the most important characteristics of Stella's paintings is his use of repetition. His Black Pin Stripe paintings of 1959 startled and shocked an art world that was unused to seeing monochromatic and repetitive images, painted flat, with almost no inflexion. During the early 1960s Stella made several series' of notched Aluminum Paintings and shaped Copper Paintings before making multi-colored and asymmetrical shaped canvases of the late 1960s. Frank Stella's approach and relationship to Color Field painting was not permanent or central to his creative output; as his work became more and more 3 dimensional after 1980.

In the late 1960s Richard Diebenkorn began his Ocean Park series; created during the final 25 years of his career and they are important examples of color field painting. The Ocean Park series exemplified by Ocean Park No.129, connects his earlier abstract expressionist works with Color field painting. During the early 1950s, Richard Diebenkorn was known as an abstract expressionist, and his gestural abstractions were close to the New York School in sensibility but firmly based in the San Francisco abstract expressionist sensibility; a place where Clyfford Still has a considerable influence on younger artists by virtue of his teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute.

By the mid-1950s, Richard Diebenkorn along with David Park, Elmer Bischoff and several others formed the Bay Area Figurative School with a return to Figurative painting. During the period between the fall 1964 and the spring of 1965 Diebenkorn traveled throughout Europe, he was granted a cultural visa to visit and view Henri Matisse paintings in important Soviet museums. He traveled to the then Soviet Union to study Henri Matisse paintings in Russian museums that were rarely seen outside of Russia. When he returned to painting in the Bay Area in mid-1965 his resulting works summed up all that he had learned from his more than a decade as a leading figurative painter. When in 1967 he returned to abstraction his works were parallel to movements like the Color Field movement and Lyrical Abstraction but he remained independent of both.

During the late 1960s Larry Poons whose earlier Dot paintings were associated with Op Art began to produce looser and more free formed paintings that were referred to as his Lozenge Ellipse paintings of 1967-1968. Along with John Hoyland, Walter Darby Bannard, Larry Zox, Ronald Davis, Ronnie Landfield, John Seery, Pat Lipsky, Dan Christensen and several other young painters a new movement that related to Color Field painting began to form; eventually called Lyrical Abstraction. The late 1960s saw painters turning to surface inflection, deep space depiction, and painterly touch and paint handling merging with the language of color. Among a new generation of abstract painters who emerged combining color field painting with expressionism the older generation also began infusing new elements of complex space and surface into their works. By the 1970s Poons created thick-skinned, cracked and heavy paintings referred to as Elephant Skin paintings; while Christensen sprayed loops, colored webs of lines and calligraphy, across multi-colored fields of delicate grounds; Ronnie Landfield's stained band paintings are reflections of both Chinese landscape painting and the Color Field idiom and John Seery stained painting as exemplified by East, 1973, from the National Gallery of Australia. Poons, Christensen, Davis, Landfield, Seery, Lipsky, Zox and several others created paintings that bridge Color Field painting with Lyrical Abstraction and underscore a re-emphasis on landscape, gesture and touch.