April 1971
For one hell of a long time now, a body of works has needed a body of literature to go with it. This is why, after viewing The Structure of Color, an exhibition organized by Marcia Tucker, I had to get the catalogue. For apart from accepting that Mrs. Tucker "knows what she likes," the show seemed purposeless.
If as Mrs. Tucker contends, Joseph Albers uses the square as "only the dish I serve my craziness about color in," what is Frank Stella's twisty-twirly "plain" geometry doing or, at the opposite end, William Williams' irrational bars of color, whose only geometrical logic is forced by the dominance of the rectilinear format to which he sticks?
The most mysterious and evocative painting in the show [Ad Reinhardt's black Abstract Painting ] is roped off cheek-by-jowl with not the best example of an artist who has produced a body of work which, though uneven, has greatly influenced a group of young painters whose art is essentially a response to color. Quite the opposite of Reinhardt, who one might say without apology, drove painting into a cul-de-sac. We don't need words. As Reinhardt made clear: "No colors ... Colors are barbaric, physical, unstable ... cannot be controlled" and "should be concealed" [quoted from the catalogue]. Look at the art I ask you! Where do you go from there?
The rest of the essay and the artists' statements in the catalogue are tautological, justifying the dismissal of the occasion as just another excuse to show the same old paintings. This game is surely given away by assertions about an exhibition's basic premise being the questions paintings themselves raise about the nature of color. Color in painting is different from any other kind of color because of the transcendental and evocative nature of the position which painting finds itself in, as a first-order activity in our society. The day man decides that painting, like philosophy, is not helping, but perpetuating the choking emptiness, all will be burnt and then, perhaps, we will all be able to breathe again - and perhaps see. Until then, exhibitions like this show that people [painters] are trying, and Mrs. Tucker ought to be thanked along with the Whitney Museum for letting us know. [ Feb. 25 -Apr.18]
FRANK BOWLING.
