Executed in dazzling colors and overwhelming formats, Kenneth Noland's “Chevrons” from 1963, the year this fascinating series of works was created, are considered absolute “signature pieces” of American Color Field Painting. In the late 1950s, Noland, in his mid-thirties, began to place concentric circles in bright colors on unprimed canvas. In these interlocking circles, which are also called “targets” due to their similarity to a bull's eye, Noland already applied the “soak stain” technique (acrylic paint on an unprimed canvas) that he had conceived with his painter friend Morris Louis in context of their exploration of the contemporary work of Helen Frankenthaler. From 1963, Noland also employed this technique for his “Chevrons” on enormous canvases, which are now considered Noland's hallmark and, at the same time, icons of “Color Field Painting”. For this piece, the artist chose to work on a canvas measuring 2.59 meters in height and 3.30 meters in width, applying his famous jagged pattern in black, red, and bright orange to the enormous surface. Noland slightly varied both the width of the colored stripes and the spaces between them, thereby using minimal painterly means to give this outstanding composition an overwhelming visual presence and tension.
After serving in the US Air Force, Noland was among the students of former Bauhaus artist Josef Albers at Black Mountain College in the late 1940s. After that, he spent time in Paris and Washington before he and Morris Louis visited Helen Frankenthaler's New York studio in 1953 at the initiative of the important art critic Clement Greenberg. There, Noland explored the gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism and Frankenthaler's innovative “soak stain” technique. Greenberg had already recognized Noland's tremendous artistic potential during an exhibition at the Kootz Gallery and encouraged the exchange with Frankenthaler. Legend has it that Noland supposedly saw the composition “Mountains and Sea” (1952), one of the first paintings in the “soak stain” technique on unprimed canvas, in the context of his visit. This experience is said to have had a lasting impact on Noland's painting. After Morris Louis' death, Noland finally settled permanently in the vibrant art metropolis of New York in 1962. In 1963, Noland created his first “Chevron,” those characteristic V-shaped paintings that would become Noland's artistic trademark. The present work, “Via Media (Suddenly)” (1963), was created during this critical early New York phase; it presents the pure color effect of red and orange in an extraordinary dynamism gained from the momentum of the shape of the arrow. While Noland initially painted the whole surface of his “Chevrons,” he soon started leaving parts of the canvas uncovered, as can be seen in the present composition. Henceforth, he integrated the untouched canvas into his painting as an important formal element. The direct juxtaposition of painted and unpainted areas creates a striking aesthetic that inevitably draws the viewer's attention to the process of the painterly fusion of color and material. Like Frankenthaler and Louis, Noland also experimented with diluted acrylic-based paints that would make it nearly impossible to rework or alter the color gradients after the paint had soaked into the unprimed canvas surface. Noland once referred to this type of painting, which does not allow for any corrections and must always be a success on the first try, as “one-shot painting”. As early as 1977, the Guggenheim Museum in New York honored Noland's outstanding work with a first retrospective. His early “Chevron Paintings” are now part of significant international museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Guggenheim Museum, New York. [JS]