Seeing Red
Joao Ribas
A comprehensive
and exhaustive narrative of Western painting has been constructed by the analysis
of how figuration transforms throughout history. The great cultural project of
the visual arts develops across a range of representational tensions, with typological
peaks and valleys, and a long expressive tradition of mutability. Twists and
turns define this history of representation, and the state or status of painting,
in whatever period, draws from this perplexing history its ever more complex
and evolving transformations. So as to make the point, each successive stratified
cultural movement seems to over-determine itself, having its visual style delineated
as a distinct approach to a series of painterly concerns.
Non-objectivism
is thus a remarkable example of a historical glitch; it altogether removes one
of the simplest, and most naïve, organizing principles in art-history. With
the very source of the representational narrative removed- the tension of subject
matter in pictorial space eliminated- the polemics of painting open can open
a wider field. Maybe a color field. Maybe red. Here metaphysics can merge with
affective psychology; the science of optics and color vibration can invest a
speculative subjectivity; minute gradations of tonality can obsess conceptual
muscle.
Along with abstraction
in general, this development in the history of visual art remains one of most
important ruptures in the sacred continuities of visual practice.
“Seeing Red: Part I, Pioneers of Non-Objective Painting” attempts to
look at this break through the incantations of a single color, surveying various
modes of abstraction. With connotations of red ranging from expressionist gestures
to the objective precision of color theory, the exhibition reaffirms the importance
of color in shaping the contemporary character of abstract art.
Removed from the pretense and gravity of physical objects, non-objectivism gave
rise to new perspectives on what the subject matter of a painting could be. Even
without the representation of things, there could always be a subject, even color
itself. Color, after all, is not a neutral phenomenon. Its full resonance often
lies beyond the simplicity of its subjection to representation. In the very least,
color is threatened by significations that can be restrictive [i.e. the overtones
of the show’s title], if not embedded in our psyche as lost pieces of distant
memory. Dissonant and harmonious, red constitutes a particularly forceful presence
within pictorial space; Delacroix spent a long time trying to tame it.
There are of course,
many reds: the red of Titian’s capes, the red of Rembrandt, Derain, and
Matisse, blood-red, the red of communism, Coca-cola red. Accordingly, color theory
extends the actual visible spectrum [0.35 micrometer to 0.9 micrometer] into
a complex relationship between colors, as well as with our own mind’s inventive
correlatives between color and emotion. For this there is no exact calibration.
As a result, there are in fact many colors within the narrow band of wavelengths
making up the visible spectrum. These all change subtlety according to our subjective
responses, as well as their own semantic values. The intimate survey of “Seeing
Red” tries to put all of these dynamics into full view.
In this respect,
it is the work of Josef Albers that most clearly admits to investing painting
with these multivalent concerns. Albers is not only a master of color-theory
based painting, he is perhaps the painter most rigorously concerned with the
scientific fallacies of color: purity, contrast, and tonality. Albers is able
to draw the marvelous spectral phenomena of color into the heart of plastic forms.
His work immerses his own philosophy of color, along with those of Itten and
Goethe, into a powerful pictorial space. “Homage to the Square”, defined
by geometrical gradations of tone, comes close to constructing a natural science
of color. Receding space is outlined almost entirely by shifts of tonality and
vibration.
With an altogether
different sense of color harmony and composition, Esteban Vicente brought a paced
lyricism to abstraction. For Vicente, red is often a contrapuntal element, bouncing
off other colors in soft blobs, or as harsh edges that derail continuity. The
careful balance in The Red and Violet takes opacity with a much lighter flair,
making Albers’ preciseness seem harsh by comparison. The painting almost
recalibrates the eye, refocuses it, as if there are in fact two different color
universes between Albers’ squares and Vicente’s ‘School of Paris’
gestures.
With Hans Hoffman, a seminal figure in the development of American abstraction,
the tensions between shape and color have an even more important role. Hoffman’s
formal concerns do not entirely coalescence with the objective harshness of much
of abstraction. Instead, his paintings often work on establishing relations between
forms. Flaming Nucleus comes much more from an elaborated concern with gestural
expression than ‘post-painterly’ abstraction. Hoffman’s expressive
synthesis of fauvist color and post-cubist line makes for a sharp contrast to
the analytic nature of later non-objective painting.
Some of these later
works stand in important contrast to the more intimate expressions of Hoffman
and Vicente. The manipulated optical illusions of Richard Anuszkiewicz’s
All Things Do Live in the Three and Julian Stanczak’s Red Trilogy pulsate
energetically. These paintings pull around themselves by pointillist tension
with green, or a twisting of color and line. The speckled impasto of Richard
Pousette-Dart’s Red Oasis moves like a pixilated television screen, where
a field of red is constantly interrupted by colored noise. What jumps out of
Jack Youngerman’s vivid Red/White is how red is particularly suited to formulate
distinct discontinuities of positive and negative space.
Even with a minimal
palette, “Seeing Red” manages to entice, if not simply due to its dynamic
contrasts. A sweeping range from analytical to expressive means the show surveys
a wide context, stylistically and chronologically, but still manages to highlight
the complex role of color in the formal logic of abstraction. These paintings
show that color is subjected neither to form nor always itself the consciously
manipulated element in an art of all-important plasticity. To those seduced by
these overtones of red, and the emotive power of color, a recommended coda is
“ I send you this Cadmium red,” the BBC program of correspondence between
John Berger and John Christie.
