Background

Kenneth Clifton Noland was born on April 10, 1924, in Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. He was a son of Harry Caswell Noland (1896–1975), a pathologist, and his wife, Bessie (1897–1980). He had four brothers.

Education

Kenneth Noland completed high school in 1942 and later attended Black Mountain College from 1946 - 1948 near his hometown. At Black Mountain, he studied color theory and contrasts of negative space, and geometric abstraction. In 1948, he traveled to Paris to study under Russian sculptor, Ossip Zadkine. In 1997 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina.

Career

In 1949 Noland moved to Washington, D.C., where he taught at the Institute of Contemporary Art from 1950 – 1952 and then at Catholic University (until 1960). He also was an instructor at the Washington Workshop of the Arts, and there, in 1953, he met the painter Morris Louis. The two became friends and often traveled together to New York. On one visit they went to Helen Frankenthaler's studio, where they saw Mountains and Seas (1952), which had been influenced by the paintings of Jackson Pollock. This work, with its airy and delicate washes of stained pigment, greatly influenced both painters.

After a period of experimentation, Noland's mature art emerged in 1958, when he began a series of stain paintings (using thin pigment to stain raw canvas) usually showing a "target" made up of concentric circles. Since there was little variety of shape, attention was placed solely on the vivid hues and their relationships. Moreover, the colors seemed disembodied and purely optical, owing to the stunning effect of the staining technique, which eliminated any tactile difference between painted and unpainted areas. The softness, which also resulted from staining, mitigated the potential brittleness of the geometric design. The extreme flatness of the painting created a powerful impact, and color pulses seemed to radiate from the canvas.

Noland tended to work in series, keeping his layouts constant while exploring different color possibilities. In 1962 he changed his format by suspending a series of colored chevrons from the top of the picture. These dramatic paintings, along with his concentric-circle pictures, were shown in the United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1964. The following year Noland received a retrospective at the Jewish Museum in New York City, where he had moved in 1961. With Louis and other painters in Washington, D. C. , Noland became known as the Washington Color Painters.

After 1964 Noland filled the entire surface of his paintings with colored bands, giving them a forceful and compact presence. He employed either a diamond-shaped canvas to accommodate chevrons or diagonal color stripes, or simply placed horizontal bands within a long, horizontally shaped format. The latter layout permitted him the greatest range of expressive color. After 1964, Noland was included among the artists known as the post-painterly abstractionists.

During the late 1960s Noland began to make sculptures, and in the 1970s made sculptures of sheet steel. In the early 1970s, Noland introduced a grid structure into his paintings, reminiscent of Mondrian. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he began working with irregularly shaped canvases, and by the mid-1980s he returned to his earlier chevron designs but with thicker paint. A 1995 exhibition in New York, Kenneth Noland at Leo Castelli, covered 35 years of Noland's work, starting with two target paintings from 1960 and ending with paintings from his Flare and Flow series of the 1990s, multipanel paintings with capricious curved shapes, sometimes separated by strips of colored Plexiglas.

Achievements

• Kenneth Noland is considered as one of the great colorists of the 20th century and as one of the major figures in American Art. He was one of the first to use the technique of staining the canvas with thinned paints and of deploying his colours in concentric rings and parallels, shaped and proportioned in relation to the shape of the canvas.
  
  His first retrospective was held at the Guggenheim Museum (1977), which traveled to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio (1978).
  
  Noland has been the subject of solo exhibitions at a range of international institutions, including the Museo de arte moderno, Mexico City (1983); Museo de bella artes, Bilbao, Spain (1985); Museum of Fine Art, Houston (2004); Tate, Liverpool (2006); and Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio (1986 and 2007).

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Galore

    1966

  • Untitled #2

    1977

  • Warm Weekend

    1967

  • Almondite

    1963

  • Handmade Papers Circle I (I-12)

    1978

  • Mysteries: Pollock and Ryder

    2002

  • Upbeat

    1998

  • Untitled

  • Tropical Zone

    1964

  • Lotus

    1962

  • Drought

    1962

  • Steel Reflect

    1986

  • Silent Adios III

  • Chevron

    1965

  • Rains - 8521

    1985

  • Flares: Desert

    1991

  • Another Line

    1970

  • Horizontal Stripes I-1

    1978

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • And Half

    1959

  • Pirouette

    1980

  • Orient

    1985

  • Untitled

  • Untitled (from the Portfolio The New York Collection for Stockholm)

    1973

  • Relic

    1969

  • Modest Georges Inesco

    1978

  • Mysteries: Infanta

    2000

  • Inner Dark Outer Light

  • Chac Volant

    1982

  • Untitled

  • Via Pale

    1968

  • Untitled (MK-82-A-20)

    1980

  • April Tune

    1969

  • Estrade

    1966

  • Gravimetric

    1981

  • Untitled

  • Curious Course

    1975

  • Rey

    1990

  • Gift of Reason

    1986

  • Via Noon

    1968

  • Magenta Haze

    1968

  • Green's Vanity

    1983

  • Two Joys

    1961

  • Blue Moon

    1962

  • Palimpsest

    1987

  • Steps Up+Down

    1987

  • Inward and Outward Bound

    1973

  • Determined Course

    1976

  • Mysteries: Gold Ring

    1999

  • New Day

    1967

  • Ice Shine

    1986

  • Cantabile

    1961

  • A Piece

    1986

  • No End

    1961

  • Sails Pride

    1977

  • Trans Shift

    1964

  • Oakum

    1970

  • Interlock Color

    1973

  • East-West

    1963

  • Sunwise

    1960

  • Pairs

    1974

  • Double Zero

    1970

  • Winter Sun

    1962

  • Play

    1960

  • Purple in the Shadow of Red

    1963

  • Inweave

    1973

  • Field

    1967

  • Mountaineer

  • from Circle Series II (Handmade Paper Project) (T. 465)

    1978

  • Level Out

    1967

  • Red, White and Green

    1963

  • Gewgaws

    1986

  • Via Mohave

    1968

  • Trans South

    1968

  • Leaves

    1973

  • Dawn's Road

    1970

  • Untitled (Pacific Coast Series #154)

    1979

  • Mysteries: Glow

    2001

  • Askew

    1958

  • Avanti Adios

    1978

  • Push

  • Rain

  • Winter Beauty

  • Untitled (Chevron)

  • Bridge Over Purple

  • Another World

  • Rich Rhythm

  • Wild Indigo

  • Epigram

  • Trace

  • Cotter

  • Upper Wand

  • Doors: Time Ahead

  • Strait

  • Highlight

  • Extent

  • Soft Touch

  • Sail

  • Yemen's Heritage

  • Regal Swoon

  • Cadmium Radiance

  • Bess

  • Horizontal Stripes VII-4 (T 471 KN325)

  • Via Light

  • 7

  • Right Pitch

  • Twice Told

  • E Viva

  • Mysteries: Winds

  • Morning Star

  • Split

  • Columbus' Egg

  • That

  • Quid

  • Echo

  • Ova-Ray

  • Flutter

  • Sewn

  • Mysteries: Light Blue Green

  • Beginning

  • And Again

  • Quartet I-IV

  • Someday or Now

  • Songs: Remembering

  • Under Color

  • Ex Nihilo

  • Trans Flux

  • Aplomb

  • Heat

  • Coastal Trim

  • Midday

  • Trans West

  • Stripes

  • Yellow Half

  • Untitled (MK-82-B-11)

  • Via Liaison

  • Passage

  • Untitled

  • Lake

  • Round

  • Star

  • Bridge

  • Fry

  • Winds 82-19

  • Earthen Bound

  • Inside

  • Magic Box

  • Winds 82-13

  • Fault Slant

  • Back and Forth

  • Drifting

  • Whirl

  • Blush

  • Keen Transit

  • Ringing Bell

  • Regal Grey

  • Periplum

  • Circle I, II-42, from Handmade Paper Project

  • Songs: Out of Nowhere

  • Teeter

  • Glean

  • Shadow on the Earth

  • Chevron 4

  • Gift

  • April

  • Rustle

  • Rains - 8519

  • Slow Plane

  • PK 0020

  • Burnt Beige

  • Transvaries

  • Untitled, from New York Collection for Stockholm

  • Refresh

  • Songs: Pennies from Heaven

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Spring Cool

  • Days and Nights

  • Stria

  • Hunch

  • Tiger Lillies

  • OD

  • Elide

  • PK-0332

  • Highlights

  • Untitled

  • Hoist

  • Ozark Princess

  • Montes Coloreados #2

  • No. One

  • Pale

  • Untitled

  • Tide

  • Native Clown

  • In the Garden

  • Untitled

  • Florio

  • Rain

  • Sound

  • Another Time

  • Mute

  • Hade

  • Handmade Papers Circle II

  • Nieuport

  • Imbued

  • A Warm Sound In a Gray Field

  • Untitled

  • Untitled (PK-0393)

  • Twin Planes

  • Rose Wide

  • Merry Hill

  • High Easter

  • Fleet

  • Blue Veil

  • Grey Pilgrim

  • Oasis

  • Untitled (Pacific Coast Series #152)

  • Dark Cherry

  • Bravo Costa Bravo

  • Lapse

  • Flush

  • Mysteries: Afloat

  • Untitled

  • Untitled #1

  • Lunar Episode

  • Jazz

  • Tomorrow

  • Via Ember

  • New Light

  • Mysteries: Excavate the Past

  • Song

  • Untitled (Pacific Coast Series #156)

  • Flares: Gentle Curves

  • Sea Rise

  • Mysteries: Amidst

  • Early Fall

  • MAC

  • Another Choice

  • Untitled

  • Songs: Blue in Green

  • Apart

  • Horizontal Focus

  • Snow and Ice

  • Summer Plain

  • Rain

  • Inner Way

  • Eastline

  • Shoot

  • Verdancy

  • Southline

  • Warm Above

  • Untitled

  • Baba Yagga

  • Handmade Paper Project Circle II

  • Largesse

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Spread

  • Shadow Line

  • Untitled (From Doors and Ghosts)

  • Composition

  • Shift

  • Halfway

  • Untitled

  • Open End

  • Winds 82-28

  • Sea Purse

  • Pan

  • Drive

  • Pent

  • Turnsole

Views

Quotations: "For me context is the key - from that comes the understanding of everything. "

"With artists of my own generation there was at first no group identity - and never a clique. "

"I've also been willing to share any help that I could give to any other artist. "

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Helen Frankenthaler: "I think all totally abstract pictures – the best ones that really come off – Newman, Pollock, Kenneth Noland – have tremendous space; perspective space despite the emphasis on flat surface. For example, in Noland a band of yellow in relation to a band of blue and one of orange can move in depth although they are married to the surface. This has become a familiar explanation, but few people really see and feel it that way..."

Connections

Kenneth Noland was married four times. His first wife was Cornelia Langer, the daughter of United States senator William Langer. The couple had three children: Cady, Lyndon, and William. They divorced soon after. In April 1967, he married psychologist Stephanie Gordon. He and Stephanie lived together for three years before marrying. They divorced three years after in June 1970. Art historian Peggy L. Schiffer became his third wife in 1970. Together, they had a son, Samuel Jesse. On April 10, 1994 he married Paige Rense, an editor.

Father:

Harry Caswell Noland

Mother:

Bessie Noland

Spouse:

Cornelia Langer

Spouse:

Stephanie Gordon

Spouse:

Peggy L. Schiffer

Spouse:

Paige Rense Noland

Paige Rense Noland was the editor in chief of Architectural Digest magazine from 1975 until 2010. She is the founder of the Arthur Rense Prize poetry award.

Brother:

William Lawrence Noland

Brother:

Neil Noland

Brother:

Harry Noland

Brother:

Bill Noland

Daughter:

Cady Noland

Daughter:

Lyndon Noland

Son:

William Noland

Son:

Samuel Jesse Noland

teacher:

Ossip Zadkine

Friend:

Morris Louis

References

• Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella
  1965
• Kenneth Noland: The Nature Of Color This catalogue covers the ABC's of Noland's pictorial vocabulary since he began painting in the 1950s, the circle, the chevron and the stripe. With that foundation, Noland built an influential oeuvre that communicated the substance and associative power of color. This compact retrospective provides a fine overview.
  2005