Ranging, 1969

About the Work

Kenneth Noland gives painting an unaccustomed form: a pale green strip, more than three metres long and fraying at the ends, is bounded at the top and bottom by precise yellow edges. The canvas shows through at the point of transition. The radiant power of the colours is subdued, the optical effects minimised, for they would endanger the two-dimensionality – an aspect of central importance for colour-field painters. Form and colour become one. We step back to grasp the work in its entire width, then move closer again to follow the course described by the colours.