Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Nolandwas an American painter. He was one of the best-known American Color Field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School movement. In 1977, he was honored by a major retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York that then traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth10 April 1924
CountryUnited States of America
That's the way I work. Usually I start by fooling with the stuff, make messes. Sometimes something comes out of it; sometimes it doesn't.
Clem had made it known that Pollock was a great painter.
Because of this the representation I'm interested in is of those things only the eye can touch.
The scene then as now was centered in New York. For the most part, I've kept a bit apart from that attractive and seductive city. I've done it by living in the country within commuting distance.
I paint my paintings directly. I almost never paint over. This maintains the attention of the picture for me, my contact with what I am doing.
Pollock was well known, certainly, but for all the wrong reasons. He was known as much for being wild and unconventional in his working methods as for being a great artist.
With artists of my own generation there was at first no group identity - and never a clique.
In the '50s Morris Louis and I were not known, David Smith and Helen Frankenthaler were not much known.
I met David Smith through my former wife, Cornelia, who'd studied with him.
For me context is the key - from that comes the understanding of everything.
As time goes on, I realize more and more that, beginning in the early 30's, David Smith began setting the precedent for what was to come later for many of us.
I've also been willing to share any help that I could give to any other artist.
Usually I throw away what I don't get right the first time.
Context begins with other artists - seniors and mentors.