Raggedy Ann's Foot: Glory of the World: Color Field Painting (Early 1950s to 1983)

Curated by Bonnie Clearwater at NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale. Loved seeing this history, and examples of work not seen before. Below a highly edited version of works that caught my attention.

A beautiful Frankenthaler (1929-2011). She is one of two women in the show of 16 artists. Here, Signal, 1969, acrylic on canvas, 102 x 99 inches. A classic example of her early technique in acrylic's infancy.

Canadian Jack Bush (1909-1977) looking particularly great in these two paintings: above, Pinched Orange, below, January Reds, 1966, 79.5 x 116.5 inches. Bush was a member of the Canadian Painters Eleven movement, which championed the lightness of Matisse and American Color Field Painters. I am excited to know this work. You see his hand, yet the color exerts control through scale.

Edward Clark (1926-2019), an SAIC colleague, also studied in Paris. He painted with brooms, and brought the technique from Paris to NYC in 1956. He describes the effect as "cutting through everything. It's also about anger or something like it, to go through it in a big sweep."

Early Frank Bowling in foreground, Frankenthaler behind right

Frankenthaler, Wine Dark, 1965, acrylic on canvas, 102 x 45.5 inches

Morris Louis Veils, the most I've ever seen. I spent time trying to figure out how he made them.

Loads of diaphanous pours, canvas flipped, and dark glaze over top.

Each composition is doubled, almost as if he'd printed one side on the other.

But they're assymetrical, so did he? Does anyone know?

Frankenthaler, Hint from Bassano, 1973, acrylic on canvas, 85 x 227 inches, Mirvish Collection, Toronto.

Olitski! (1922-2007) in the period where he wanted paint to float in the air. Yellow Looshe, 1968, acrylic on canvas, 81 x 260 inches. It reminds me of Yuskavage's Big Little Laura, 1998, 76 x 96 inches--intentional?

In honor of my early exposure to Stella's Protractor series at Pasadena Museum of Art in the 1960s. Waskwalu (Variations on a Circle), 1968, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 96 inches. The informative didactic panel said he wrote his dissertation at Princeton on Jackson Pollock's drip paintings and the interlacing ornamental motifs in early Medieval Hiberno-Saxon illuminated manuscripts. Stella also visited Iran in 1963, and was awestruck by Islamic ornament--who knew?

Detail

Sam Gilliam (1933-2022), like his college Pollock, broke through barriers--in his case the rectangle. An early Gilliam, above, and below, Idylls 1, 1970, acrylic, metallic paint, crayon, and synthetic cable on unstretched canvas, 76 x 61 inches.