1989

Signed titled and dated verso numbered 89-20

Acrylic on canvas laid over board

81 x 37 inches ( 206 x 94 cm)

Ex-collection
The Artist 1989
Private collection until 2017

Note This work is registered in the archives of the Kenneth Noland Foundation

The problem of figure and ground was resolved brilliantly in Noland’s series the “Doors” of 1987 through ’89. In these painted constructions, Noland’s characteristic bands and stripes were replaced by canvas stretched over narrow door panels. Paint application were carried forward from the “Eighties Chevrons”: complex applications of clear, glass-like gels — often containing pearlescent, metallic, or interference pigments — scraped and slid across colored underpainting. Painted panels were assembled side by side, interspersed and surrounded by colored plastic strips to make a constructed picture. Because of their obvious construction, the “Doors” were immediate and physical in a way that superceded Noland’s previous flatness. Although their final configuration was often close to a traditional square, the total effect acquired a new and more emphatic immediacy by the literal character of the individual panels. In comparison, Noland’s radical “Stripes” of the late ’60s, and even his “Shapes” and “Surfboards,” seem illusionistic. Yet for all their immediacy, the “Doors” were not reliefs or sculptures. They were a new kind of picture, one which gleamed against the wall.