Kenneth Noland: Circles.(Brief Article)

"Kenneth Noland: Circles" at Ameringer Howard, New York. December 7, 2000-January 20, 2001

Two years ago, in the valedictory show at Andre Emmerich's gallery, Kenneth Noland brilliantly reimagined the circle paintings that had made him famous some forty years earlier. In that exhibition, he used a small format, metallic pigments, and a host of materials--such as transparent resin--which added texture and thickness to an iconic image, which, over a generation ago, had seemed the epitome of Greenbergian flatness. So unexpected and so impressive was Noland's first return to the circle that his next attempt, "Kenneth Noland: Circles" at Ameringer Howard, was bound to feel anticlimactic. Not that his new circle series has any less rigor or beauty than the last go-round, but the level of inventiveness was diminished somewhat in the new show to quieter, more subtle modulations.

That Noland once again embraced flatness in his most recent circle paintings comes as a mild shock, since by doing so he seemed to be referring to the original versions from the late Fifties and early Sixties, rather than extending the territory opened up in the Emmerich show. All seven of the new works employ the word "mysteries" in their titles, and all the canvases are stretched on larger (relative to the last show) square supports, ranging from 30x30 inches to 60x60 inches. Most strikingly, the variables at Ameringer were severely reduced. These are paintings that beguile with the barest of means: color, size, and interval. All maintain rolled-on, all-over grounds onto which a cloudlike, soft-edged circular area of acrylic is sprayed. A line drawn inside the sprayed-on circular area defines a first ring, then a concentrically painted ring of a different hue creates a wider belt of color, inside of which a hard-edged, circular core hovers. The light, slightly metallic, lawn-green ground of Mysteries: Osage (2000) implies a limitless field of color upon which the central motif of spinning and pulsing color bands plays, centripetally concentrating what the eye sees. With its diffuse edges, the central yellow cloud hints at nature, the stellar cosmos, ...