Yesterday, ArtInfo.com announced the death of Kenneth Noland, noted color field painter. Today, the rest of the world pays attention:
PORT CLYDE, Maine—Kenneth Noland, one of the main proponents of the rigorously abstract Color Field painting movement in the 1950s, has died of cancer. He was 85. Born in Asheville, N.C., Noland served in World War II before enrolling at the Black Mountain College, the alternative school that proved a formative experience for many members of the American postwar avant-garde, including Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Cage. Impressed by the “stain” paintings of Morris Louis, Noland developed a pictorial language of spare, often bright abstraction centered on concentric circles and repeated chevrons, motifs that he would utilize throughout his career. Formalist art critic Clement Greenberg championed Noland, along with Jules Olitski and Louis, in his influential writing of the 1950s and 60s, interpreting their paintings as the next logical progression in Modernism’s continuous refining of the medium, reducing it to solitary, non-representational painted forms on blank canvas.
Color Field Painter Kenneth Noland Has Died (ArtInfo.com)
