Kenneth Noland
b. 1924, United States
Blind Passage, 1977
Acrylic on canvas
265.4 x 148 cm
Blind Passage features one of Kenneth Noland’s shaped canvases, painted during a phase in his career where he had already exhausted the ways colour could be applied as shapes on a canvas. Noland thus dismantled this standstill by shifting his focus to shaping the canvas itself in asymmetrical forms, such as this artwork’s polygonal shape. This changes the usual spatial relationships that his layers of colour have with the canvas below, as there are no longer any areas of unpainted canvas to draw such comparisons from. Regarding works from this period in his artistic career, Noland said, “I came to the fact that unbalancing has its own order. In a peculiar way it can still end up feeling symmetrical.” Further emphasising this quality of imbalance are the stripes painted over the asymmetrical canvas, where these colour stripes are slanted, varying in thickness, and inconsistent in width. Thus, this work offers a more complex perspective to Noland’s exploration of colour and geometry, as the two elements interact across multiple aspects of the artwork.
Photo: Fred W. McDarrah
Blind Passage comes from a period in Kenneth Noland’s career when he had already explored many ways of applying colour as shapes on a canvas. At this point, Noland felt he had reached a standstill and decided to break free from this limitation by shifting his focus to the shape of the canvas itself, opting for asymmetrical forms. In doing so, he disrupted the usual spatial relationships between his layers of colour and the canvas beneath. Regarding works from this period in his artistic career, Noland said, “I came to the fact that unbalancing has its own order. In a peculiar way it can still end up feeling symmetrical.” Unlike in his previous works, there are no areas of unpainted canvas for comparison. The slanted stripes of colour that cover the canvas further emphasise this imbalance. These stripes vary in thickness and width, adding an element of unpredictability to the composition. This approach gives us a more complex perspective on Noland's ongoing exploration of colour and geometry, as the two elements now interact in new and dynamic ways across the entire artwork.
