Master Art

The present sheet is one of a distinctive series of works on paper produced by Kenneth Noland beginning in the second half of the 1970s, in a process which he continued to develop for the next two decades. As Judith Goldman has noted, ‘Kenneth Noland created his first handmade paper pieces in 1976. He had not planned to. When he produced a screenprint in 1969, he found printmaking uninteresting. At the time, he was uncomfortable with the collaborative process. Depending on others for results, on master printers and technicians, made him uneasy, and he disliked the idea that prints were reproducible.’

In 1976, however, Noland participated in a Paper Workshop at Bennington College in Vermont, and he soon became interested in papermaking, eventually setting up a paper studio. As Goldman points out, ‘Making paper felt as familiar to Noland as staining color on canvas. It was fast, direct, and not like the traditional print media, a transfer process. He did not have to wait for inks to dry and acids to bite, and he need not depend on anyone else. He could make one-of-a-kind images himself. In some ways, papermaking was more direct than painting. A brush was unnecessary; he could use his hands. Instead of raw canvas, he could begin on a colored ground. To create texture and color, he could overlap pulp, and add colored pulp and cut-up papers ant any point in the process. By embedding color inside the paper, he could define its shape.’

In 1978 Noland spent several months working at Tyler Graphics in Bedford, New York, refining and developing his interest in papermaking, and creating a number of striking works as a result. ‘Working with oriental and western fibres and bits of colored paper, he produced over 200 images. The results were staggering…no two are the same. Colors vary from filmy blues and bright yellows to soft purples and murky greys. Textures range from wafer-thin oriental surfaces to surfaces, thick as encrusted cardboard. In some pieces, image prevails; in some, structure does. Papermaking is never the point; for Noland, it is a way to explore color and create texture.’

The process of using paper pulp as the primary ingredient in this body of work was, in its immediacy and physicality, of great appeal to Noland. The layering of coloured paper pulp to create a final image allowed the artist to explore colour relationships in new ways. Noland’s process in the production of vibrant works in paper pulp, such as the present sheet, has been described at length by Goldman. Writing of the artist’s work at Tyler Graphics in 1978, she noted that, ‘Before each series, and sometimes each image, Noland decides on the base sheet’s color, texture and thickness. He selects fibers to be macerated in the beater, the mould to form paper and the material to color pulp…To form each base sheet, [master printer] Kenneth Tyler and Lindsay Green dip the mould into in the vat, remove and shake it back and forth, so that pulp covers the surface evenly. Then, they turn the mould over, exerting pressure, to transfer the paper to the wet felt on the arched table…While Tyler and Green were creating the base sheet, Noland selected colors in an adjoining room where thirty plastic pails filled with colored pulp covered the floor. There were at least eight different blues, as many greens, every imaginable yellow, grey, fuschia, peach. The array of colors seemed more than sufficient, but from those thirty colors, Noland created 100. Studying the options, Noland moved around the pails. Occasionally, he stopped to mix a new color. To indicate his pleasure, he tossed small buckets into the larger ones which an assistant filled and placed on a small table beside the handmade paper. Noland lined up the pails of color, rearranged them, put handfuls of color in a line on a ledge, looked at the sequence and began...Into [a plastic frame] Noland pushed and patted colored pulp. Using his hands, he sometimes smeared pulp to create a ragged edge or poured water over the pulp, causing color to ooze and blend into the sheet…Noland calls everything he puts into the paper “stuff”, which is the trade name for pulp. The term suggests the sexiness of the material, which can be held in the hand, squeezed and made into shapes. When Noland finishes laying on color, Tyler and Green remove the plastic frame, put the wet sheet between felts and then into the press. The press removes excess water, and fuses the layers of pulp into a continuous surface. The process radically changes the image. Wet pulp looks as glossy and thick as paint; as paper dries, color turns matte, paper and color become inseparable. The color is no longer on top of the paper, but in it.’
 
As Judith Goldman has also written, ‘Noland’s methods take on interest as they reveal the intelligence and decisions of his art. To the papermaking process, he brought not only an intuitive, extravagant sense of color, but more than thirty years of painting experience…Throughout, he found additional ways to order color. As a painter, that is what he does. Papermaking affords him endless options...Noland brings art to the craft of papermaking. He finds ways to use pulp like paint.’


444 x 305 mm. (17 1/2 x 12 in.) [image] 
626 x 490 mm. (24 5/8 x 19 1/4 in.) [sheet]