A central figure in the style of painting known as Color Field, Kenneth Noland was one of the most inventive painters of the sixties and beyond. While studying at the adventurous Black Mountain College in North Carolina, he met critic Clement Greenberg who fostered his interest in radical art. In 1950, Greenberg invited Noland and his friend Morris Louis to Helen Frankenthaler’s New York studio where their encounter with her soak-stain technique of painting was revelatory. Returning home to Washington, D.C., Noland and Louis devoted themselves to pushing the possibilities of this method forward, and the sheer pleasure they took in handling the materials and experimenting with color combinations set in motion the Washington Color School, which included fellow artist Thomas Downing, among others.
As opposed to Frankenthaler’s spontaneous approach with staining, Noland adopted various structures to organize his fields, including circles, chevrons and stripes. Rather than limiting creativity, these “scaffolds for color” liberated him from the worry of composition, balance and illusionism, so he could concentrate on adjustments of color and the energy and expression realized through their interaction. Noland’s perspective of “shape as a vehicle for color” launched his experiments with scale and canvas shape, a pursuit he frequently investigated in series form. Par Transit is a classic painting from the Diamond Series. Here, close-keyed hues stained into the canvas are arranged in bands that echo the orientation of the shaped canvas support.
Details
- Artist Name: Kenneth Noland (American, 1924-2010)
- Title: Par Transit
- Date: 1966
- Medium: Acrylic on canvas
- Dimensions: 103-1/4 x 214-1/2 in. (262.2 x 544.8 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Rowan
- Accession Number: P.1969.112
Object Information
Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Rowan, gift 1969 to;
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, 1969-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, 1975.;
A Selection of Paintings and Sculptures from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Rowan
Systemic Painting
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1966-09-21 to 1966-11-27
Painting in New York: 1944 to 1969
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1969-11-24 to 1970-01-11
Loan to the permanent collection, Virginia Steele Scott Galleries at the Huntington_5
- The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 2017-04-25 to 2023-09-22
American Art of the Sixties
- San Francisco Museum of Art, 1967-06-02 to 1967-07-02
Color Fields
- Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1996-11-24 to 1997-03-30
Surface Truths: Abstract Painting in the Sixties
- Norton Simon Museum, 2011-03-25 to 2011-08-15
Recent Acquisitions, 1969
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1969-11-24 to 1970-01-18
Selections from the Permanent Collection
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1971-07-13 to 1971-09-19
- Art News,
- L'Arte Moderna, p. 115
- The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Systemic Painting, 1966,
- Rose, Barbara, American Art Since 1900, A Critical History, 1967,
- Coplans, John, A Selection of Paintings and Sculptures from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Rowan, 1967,
- Pasadena Art Museum, Recent Acquisitions 1969, 1969, no. 14 p. 11
- Solomon, Alan, Painting in New York: 1944 to 1969, 1969, no. 26 p. 53
- Artists' America, 1973,
- Grand Encyclopedia of the World, 1973,
- Fisher, Leonard Everrett, Masterpieces of American Painting, 1985, pp. 214-215
- Humblet, Claudine, La Nouvelle Abstraction Américaine 1950-1970, 2003, Vol. I p. 629
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