Introduction
The work of Morris Louis (1912-1962) characterizes the difficulty: a definite impression of showing indifference appears to surround it these days. Louis was not famous when he was still living. But nowadays his paintings are accepted as masterpieces and hang in numerous museums around the world. Louis gives rise to nonobjective artwork. There are no particular things in his pictures…no features or plants or mountains. The drawing is complete of wholesome colors and forms.
Morris Louis completed up a entire original class of work of art. He is not using a paintbrush at every one; he just poured paint down the canvas. He normally applies especially liquid acrylic paint, blend with care so it would run and stretch out in the manner he desired. He described his stripes of paint “veils,” similar to a thin cloth you can see all the way through. Louis cautiously turned the canvas one way and the other so the flowing paint would generate the outline he wish for…and this was not a simple piece of work, as he produced truly large paintings.
Discussion
The artistic creation of Louis’s that is highly regarded by the art world was created in a time of to some extent under 10 years. Throughout the last decade of his life, Louis was extraordinarily creative; turning out in 1960 and 1961, for instance, more than 100 works of the remarkably scaled “Unfurled” sequences.
Louis’s work is symbolic and indicative: what might appear to several to be an expressive as well as a natural fineness appears to some to be a picture of the freshness and spontaneous of conclusion. He knew what he desired and he meticulously improved methods that allowed him to get there as precisely as possible. This no-nonsense method (common with the Minimalists) made for stylishness, a wealth of means capable of producing multifaceted result.
Common sense and the course of testing when used to art are likely to generate results that are expressively cool. But Louis’s paintings is also, in their modest empirical practice, in their level; forward, presentational excellence, conceive themselves as a review of that art. Saf is an amazing Veil painting by Morris Louis, the chief practitioner of the society that has come to be recognized as Color Field painting. Supported by the famous art reviewer Clement Greenberg, Color Field climb to reputation in the late fifties and it’s most significant distinctiveness were color, normally in effect of unchanged or unadjusted grounds and most notably, a sense for uniformity and conservation of the portrait flat surface as a two-dimensional facade.
Saf is from the previous collection of Veil paintings completed by the artist. One gets the logic of an artist at the height of his supremacy and completely in control of the means, widening his previous originality to the maximum. In its place of the gigantic wall of color of the previous veils, Saf is made up of a sequence of uneven peaks and valleys. The irresistible impression is one of fire, as the tongues of flame go up to the top of the canvas. The high-key orange and reds are distinguished with a brown layer towards the top border, tossing the “flames” in high release, which provide the masterpiece a colorful quality.
Louis’s Veil paintings earned Louis the first major praise of his career. The first solo display of the Veils was prearranged by Greenberg for French & Company’s high-status and vast museum-quality space in New York. Included were a collection of 1954 Veils and a great number of Veils from 1958-1959. They were well-liked for their “thin films of beautiful color, spread over the surface to unbelievable depths without substantial change in plane. They are paintings of hard to believe fragility on an gigantic scale…Louis is exceptionally much apart from New York School painting, yet he is sincerely occupied in a absolutely independent effort to broaden painting’s frontiers” (M. Sawin, 1985).
Conclusion
Extremely secretive, the artist’s working technique remains unknown, but what is obvious from an assessment is that they were carried out in parts and that the works were poured from the top down, where the color pooled up at the base. Louis’s method is inseparably connected with his work. “Louis drops his paint on unsized and unprimed cotton duck canvas, leaving the color just about all over thin enough, no matter how numerous unlike veils of it are place over, for the eye to sense the threadedness and unevenness of the material underneath. But “underneath” is the incorrect word.
The material being soaked in paint rather than merely covered by it, turn out to be paint in itself, color in itself, like dyed cloth; the threadedness and unevenness are in the color” (M. Fried, 1970). Saf is that exceptional mixture of coloristic magnificence; integrative difficulty and recognized poise that mark Louis’s most bold and convincing work. The ability with which this painting and the others were completed remains an essential element of our understanding of them, and reveals Louis’s talent to balance a precisely standardize image satisfaction on a firm abstract foundation.
References
M. Fried, Morris Louis, New York, 1970, pl. 95.
D. Upright, Morris Louis: The Complete Paintings, A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1985, p. 212, no. 243 (illustrated in color, p. 155).
Kalina, Richard. Morris Louis at Ameringer/Howard – Brief Article Art in America , 2000.