Scene On Canvas: L. A. Contemporary Art: Openness And Clarity: Color Field Works From The 1960s And 1970s

Openness And Clarity: Color Field Works From The 1960s And 1970s is on view at Honor Fraser gallery in the Culver City Arts District until August 2, 2014.
This exhibition stresses the social framework integral to the formation of the Color Field movement. Art critic Clement Greenberg had played a pivotal role in the movement by introducing key artists to one another and it in turn influenced their own work immensely; for example he showed Helen Frankenthaler's work to Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland also leading to their close friend Jules Olitski being influenced by him.

Anthony Caro's Dumbfound is an amazing sculpture! In 1960 he traveled from England to the United States and met Greenberg, Louis and Noland, who all influenced his work immensely. When he returned to Britain his compositions became very monochromatic and horizontal.

Robert Motherwell is classified as a Abstract Expressionist and part The New York School. His work shows his interest in color and composition as subjects. Along with Stella they changed the notions of painting and objecthood. This is the first time I've read about the concepts behind artwork and found it more compelling. Maybe I shouldn't have put the prior sentence on the web but oh well. It's intriguing to read about how they changed color from being a subordinate component of subject matter in a piece to being the subject.

Frank Stella Ctesiphon I (1968) is on loan the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and is part of Stella's Protractor Variation series. He made this series after traveling to Iran and it's influenced from the interweaving/interlacing elements in Persian decorative art and architecture. I knew of Frank Stella, I've flipped though enough art history books to know who he was, that's the extent of my appreciation of his work...but then I saw his artwork in person. I've never been more mesmerized by an art piece before! My optic nerves were overwhelmed, it was really powerful. Gallery junkies talk about this from time to time (the 'quality gap' of what a piece looks like in a book as oppose to real life). I'm sure that phrase I just made up above to summarize this widely known phenomenon will never catch on. I'm talking about seeing an art piece in a book or on the web and how it can't do justice to viewing the piece in real life. Frank Stella's work is the most potent example of the quality gap an art piece can have. Frank Stella used common house paint and went to Princeton.