Color-Field Painters

Examples of Color-Field Painters in the following topics:

• Post-Painterly Abstraction

  • Post-Painterly Abstraction was often characterized as cleanly linear, using bright colors, lacking in detail, and open in composition.
  • Examples of Post-Painterly Abstractionists include Hard-Edged Painters such as Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella who explored relationships between tightly-ruled shapes and edges, and Color-Field Painters such as Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis , who explored the tactile and optical aspects of large, open fields of pure color.
  • While the term Post-Painterly Abstraction gained some currency in the 1960s, it was gradually supplanted by Minimalism, Hard-Edge Painting, Lyrical Abstraction and Color-Field Painting.
  • During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Frank Stella was a significant figure in the emergence of Minimalism, Post-Painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting.
  • Compare and contrast the techniques of the Hard-Edged Painters and the Color-Field Painters.

• Color Field Painting

  • Color Field painting can be recognized by its large fields of solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane.
  • Color Field is characterized primarily by its use of large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane.
  • Encompassing several decades from the mid-20th century through the early 21st century, the history of Color Field painting can be separated into three separate but related generations of painters, commonly grouped into abstract expressionism, post-painterly abstraction, and lyrical abstraction.
  • The most basic defining technique of painting is application of paint, and the Color Field painters revolutionized the way paint could be effectively applied.
  • Jack Bush was a Color Field painter who made used geometric, simple forms to highlight the pure interaction of color in his work.

• The New York School

  • The New York School was an informal group of American abstract painters and other artists active in the 1950s and 1960s.
  • The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City.
  • The canvas as the arena became a credo of Action painting, while the integrity of the picture plane became a credo of the Color Field painters.
  • Painters, sculptors, and printmakers created art that was termed Action painting, Fluxus, Color Field painting, Hard-edge painting, Pop art, Minimal Art and Lyrical Abstraction, among other styles and movements associated with abstract expressionism.

• Other Forms of Cubism

  • It is difficult to isolate a particular aesthetic common to the constructivist philosophy as it is so broad, but it can be roughly distinguished by its use of bright, bold color and geometric designs, especially in graphic design.
  • In 1910 and 1911 futurist painters made use of the technique of divisionism, which entails breaking light and color down into a field of stippled dots and stripes.
  • Following a visit to Paris in 1911, the Futurist painters adopted the methods of the Cubists.
  • The geometric forms and bright colors in this painting are characteristic of the Constructivist aesthetic.

• Post-Impressionism

  • Post-Impression refers to a genre that rejected the naturalism of Impressionism in favor of using color and form in more expressive manners.
  • For example, they continued using vivid colors, thick application of paint, distinctive brush strokes, and real-life subject matter, but they were also more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, distort forms for expressive effect, and to use unnatural or arbitrary colors in their compositions.
  • Although these cases illustrate the difficulty of assigning labels, the work of the original Impressionist painters may, by definition, be categorized as Impressionism.
  • Vincent van Gogh used vibrant colors and swirling brush strokes to convey his feelings and his state of mind .
  • Georges Seurat's works are Pointilist, using systematic dots of color to create form and structure.

• Kano School Painting in the Edo Period

  • However, it simultaneously developed a brightly colored and firmly outlined style for large panels, which reflected distinctively Japanese traditions.
  • Many of the works during this period combined the forceful quality of work from the earlier Momoyama period with the tranquil depiction of nature and more refined use of color typical of the current Edo period.
  • The school was supported by the Shogunate, effectively representing an official style of art; under the Edo period in which art and culture were strictly regulated, this essentially monopolized the field of painting.
  • The Kanō school drew on the Chinese tradition of literati painting by scholar-bureaucrats, but the Kanō painters were firmly professional artists: they were very generously paid if successful and received formal workshop training in the family workshop (similar to European painters of the Renaissance or Baroque period).
  • Kanō painters worked primarily for the nobility, shoguns, and emperors, covering a wide range of styles, subjects, and formats.

• Watercolor

  • Watercolor is a water-soluble painting medium known for its subtle, delicate colors and careful, layered brush work.
  • Watercolor paintings are known for their subtle, delicate colors and careful, minimal brush work.
  • Watercolors were generally used by Baroque easel painters only for sketches, copies or cartoons (full-scale design drawings).
  • Botanical artists have always been among the most exacting and accomplished watercolor painters, and even today watercolors, with their unique ability to summarize, clarify and idealize in full color, are used to illustrate scientific and museum publications.
  • Wildlife illustration reached its peak in the 19th century with artists such as John James Audubon, and today many naturalist field guides are still illustrated with watercolor paintings.

• Orthodox Confucian Painting under the Qing Dynasty

  • High levels of literacy, prosperous cities, a successful publishing industry, and the Confucian emphasis on cultivation all fed a lively and creative set of cultural fields.
  • The early Qing dynasty developed in two main strands of painting: the Orthodox school and the Individualist painters.
  • The Six Masters include the flower painter Yun Shouping, the landscape painter Wu Li, and the Four Wangs: Wang Shimin, Wang Jian, Wang Yuanqi, and Wang Hui.
  • Yun Shouping, Peonies, Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk (17th- 18th c.)
  • Wang Hui, Clearing Autum Sky over a Fishing Vilage, hanging scroll, ink and light colors on paper (1680)

• Renaissance Painting After Masaccio

  • Masaccio is widely regarded as the first Renaissance painter of the Italian Quattrocento, and despite the brevity of his career, had the most profound influence on his successors.
  • These painters dedicated themselves to the study of light and shadow and perspective as their paramount concern.
  • Paolo Uccello's paintings emphasized color and pageantry rather than strictly classical realism, and he used perspective to convey a feeling of depth rather than to narrate different or succeeding stories as his contemporaries did.
  • He is best known for his three egg tempera on wood paintings representing the Battle of San Romano, which use broken weapons on the ground and fields on the distant hills to show of his perfect employment of perspective and play of the idea of the checkerboard floor.
  • Discuss the contribution of Masaccio to Renaissance art and his influence on painters of the Florentine Quattrocento

• Unity and Variety

  • Color Harmony or Color Theory is considered a foundational composition principle of harmony that outlines the application of color in art.
  • There are also definitions (or categories) of colors based on the color wheel: primary color, secondary color and tertiary color.
  • According to traditional color theory (based on subtractive primary colors and the RYB color model), yellow mixed with violet, orange mixed with blue, or red mixed with green produces an equivalent gray and compose the painter's complementary colors.
  • These contrasts form the basis of Chevreul's law of color contrast: colors that appear together will be altered as if mixed with the complementary color of the other color.
  • In color theory, neutral colors are colors easily modified by adjacent more saturated colors and they appear to take on the hue complementary to the saturated color.