Title of Artwork: “Where”
Artwork by Morris Louis
Year Created 1960
Summary of Where
Morris Louis’ “Where” is a seminal piece in his oeuvre, completing a “theme” that began with the “Veil” series. A “veil” of black or semi-transparent paint covered the stripes of pure, flat colour in his earlier paintings, revealing them only at the top edge of the painting (like a rearranged rainbow).
All About Where
The “veil” is gradually removed in later works like “Floral V,” only to be completely eradicated in “Where” and other works like it.
When the magna paint is poured onto the canvas, the artist’s intentions and methods are not entirely known (not even his wife has seen him painting, as he used to paint before her wife returned from work).
Morris Louis, according to art critic Clement Greenberg, preferred “openness” and “clarity” over the dark tones of Rothko and Clyfford Still because he disliked their “action painting” and “chaos.” In general, Color Field painters focused on making colour the focus of their work.
As a result of the playful “pillars” and vibrant colours, Morris Louis’s paintings can’t entirely be considered “impersonal,” even in his final “column” paintings (which used unmixed colour, a tactic that further decreased the involvement of the painter’s hand) and his last “stripe” paintings (which used unmixed colour). “He began to feel, think, and conceive almost exclusively in terms of open colour,” Greenberg wrote about Louis.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
