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In his
Color Field Painting Louis applies liquid acrylic paints to unprimed
canvas, now and then guiding the flow of the paint with a stick. The
fluid paint soaks into the canvas, leaving soft borders as in a stain.
Morris
Louis was an american representative of the 'Post-Painterly
Abstractions' movement. He was one of the first painters who used
acrylic colours - as early as 1948. After 1961 they have been customised
for him to give the acrylic colors a more liquid consistency. He used
'Magna paint' manufactured by Bocour Artist's Colors Inc., which is
oil-miscible (Louis never used the water-miscible kind - ed.:>critc
Clement Greenberg). This paint contains: resin, thinner, an emulsifying
agent and pigments. This paint is quick drying and non-acidic and can be
thinned to flow and bind. Unlike the Liquitex water-based paint it is
oil compatible and soluble in white spirit.
Louis was
heavily influenced from: Jackson
Pollock, David
Alfaro Siqueiros
(the Mexican
Muralist 1896-1974), and Arshile
Gorky (the
Abstract Surrealist) even more in 1953 by Helen
Frankenthaler's
style - not to use a brush to apply color to a support.
Louis worked in a late Cubist manner before he started in 1953 with his
own pouring and staining style. In 1954 he had solved, to his own
satisfaction, most of the practical problems of the staining method.
In 1954 he started his series called 'Veils' and worked on it until
1959. The 'Veils' series was done by pouring color vertically down onto
the canvas. Louis used thin washes of paint to creat translucent color
curtains on unprimend canvas.
In 1959/1960 he started a new series called 'Florals'. Here he used
heavier paint and applied random bursts.
In 1960 he worked on a series called 'Unfurleds'. He specialised in a
concentration on the lower corners of an otherwise empty canvas. This
series has an amout of about 150 canvases. Only two were given
individual titles: 'alpha' and 'delta', because they
were shown in an exhibition. In his 'Unfurled' series he applied thin
streams of brilliant colors running in separate, parallel bands,
starting either from the corners of the canvas and leaving the middle
free, or from the center. Starting again a new series in 1961 called
'Stripe and Pillar'. In this series he applied colored bands which have
been juxtaposed vertically and horizontally.
Louis's technique to paint was like Helen Frankenthaler's: working
without a brush, which magnifies the flatness of the picture plane. He
diluted his acrylic colors with turpentine to get a more fluid
consistency of the color and let it soak into the unprimed canvas - like
on blotting paper. In this technique he achieved much more luminosity in
the color and more flatness in his paintings. Also part of his technique
was not to show any evidence of brushstrokes. Color itself was the theme
of his work.
Critic Clement
Greenberg
(1982) about Morris Louis' huge canvases:
'Morris didn't paint big for
museums, but only because he was fed up with
cabinet sizes, nothing more.'
Further
Readings about Morris Louis
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