Carolina Quotes[the 'Surfboards' - series of the mid-70's] were almost like cut-out figures without being figurative...I think of them, in some way, as being like figures; they remind me of figures in vertical Cubist paintings. Even the small pictures have that kind of human proportion in the rectangles. It's not exactly a reference, but the relation of length to width in the rectangles is like a person.
Kenneth Noland Carolinian
Source
Kenneth Noland, pp. 23-24
- work
- "Conversation with Karen Wilkin" (1986-1988)
- year
- 1986
- locator
- pp. 23-24
Cite this record
“[the 'Surfboards' - series of the mid-70's] were almost like…” Kenneth Noland. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-31F6E1BAF3. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/31f6e1baf3
More from Kenneth Noland
Tony Cairo [English abstract sculptor] and I tried to collaborate at several points and it hasn't been successful. As a matter of fact, recently Tony has made sculpture that I have painted. He has to make the sculpture before I can paint it. That means that the form is taking precedence – that the material takes precedence as a form, rather than color establishing the form. It's not going to well but I'm working on it. There's something about color that is so abstract that it is difficult for it to function in conjunction with solid form.. .Color has properties of weight, density, transparency, and so forth. And when it also has to be compatible with things that have an actual density, a given form, it's very difficult.
In the 1950's there was a kind of agreement that a good artist would do something in his picture that acknowledge the edge, but it was a question of doing something when you got to the edge. Cropping was something new. It came from photography and from Clement Greenberg. It was resisted as being too easy.
the possibility of dispersing colors through a given layout naturally appealed to me. The idea of putting a lot of color on the panel surfaces didn't. It would probably have been too strong an effect to live with. I wanted something more woven in. the interstices – that was suggested by I.M. Pei – suited me better because if one chose to look at them the eye would be moved along by the differences in color.