“If Noland has to be categorized, I would call him a ‘color’ painter too. His color counts by its clarity and its energy; it is not there neutrally, to be carried by the design and drawing; it does the carrying itself.”
—Clement Greenberg
Western Set is a brilliant example from Kenneth Noland’s series of Stripes, where he abandoned the geometric shapes employed in his earlier works, replacing them with a horizontal reading of color in its purest form.
Noland’s art is known for its ability to reflect rudimentary emotions through non-objective form. With a simple combination of dynamic colors, Western Set invites the viewer into a world of pure abstraction that has nothing but a marvelous optical effect created from the clusters of paint. The top and bottom of the rectangular canvas are occupied by two monochromatic stripes painted with different shades of pink. Slightly above the lower stripe, a thin, golden line runs from one end to another, embellishing the canvas with a richer visual experience. The color combination recalls the view of a landscape during sunset–two shades of pink as the dimming sky and the golden line as the last ray of the sun. In between these stripes, an uninterrupted band of white lays in the middle, emptying the focus of the eyes and providing the viewer with a space of imagination.
Frederic Edwin Church, Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Image: Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1965.233
Before discovering the motifs of stripes, Noland had worked with a number of different geometrical forms. He first developed his signature abstract style through his concentric circle paintings conceived in the late 1950s, then chevrons in the mid-1960s, and diamonds in 1964. He continued to play with the possibility of various shapes, testing their ability to serve as the vehicle for color.
“In a certain sense, you’ve got to be self-conscious about what you’re doing. You can make conscious choices and you can make unconscious or feeling choices. I would rather rely on feeling choices.”
—Kenneth Noland
While he was experimenting with needle diamonds, Noland discovered the motif of the horizontal stripe and fell in love with its unique structure. In order to achieve the straight edge of the stripe, the artist would employ tape to achieve a precision that was not present in his earlier works. Regardless of the shapes and motifs, the nature of Noland’s art has never changed: “I wanted to have color be the origin of painting.”i Exemplifying this goal, Western Set envelopes the viewers onto a fantastic visual journey, extending their vision beyond the physical limitations of the canvas.
i Paul Richard, “Look Who’s Back, Letting Color Sing,” Washington Post, Sep. 30, 1977.
Provenance
André Emmerich Gallery, New York Acquired at the above by the present owner