Ken Noland RIP

Kenneth Noland 1924-2010

In a nutshell from an article in the New York Times: Kenneth Noland was "Born in Asheville, N.C., in 1924, he studied art at the adventurous, short-lived Black Mountain College (conveniently located just outside his hometown) from 1946 to 1948, was inspired by the stain-painting technique that Helen Frankenthaler deducted from Jackson Pollock’s drips, and had his first exhibition in New York in 1957, at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

Mr. Noland’s signature motif was a radiant target made of rings of pure color strained directly on raw canvas, with that canvas contributing a wonderful sense of breathing room between each band of color. The power of the colors, their often discordant interaction and the expanding and contracting rhythms of the bands of paint and the raw canvas, could be stunningly direct and vibrant. Mr. Noland’s work was championed by Clement Greenberg and other formalist art critics, but in the beginning it was also greatly admired by more wide-ranging critics, including Donald Judd."
Mandarin, 1961
acrylic on canvas
209.9 x 209.6 cm (82 5/8 x 82 1/2 in.)

And as I recently saw this, the most amazing of his works at the Meyerhoff Collection exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, I am particularly sad about his passing. Perhaps there will be a period of reflection and renaissance of his ouvre as a tribute.