Morris Louis's
paintings appear serene and almost ethereal. Working within a cramped
studio, the artist pleated and tacked large spans of cotton canvas to
a wooden stretcher, then poured dilute paint down the pleats, tilting
the stretcher to further guide the course of the liquid. Paint soaked
the fabric, like watercolor into paper.
Critics at the time praised the flat, uninflected character of
surfaces. Writing in 1960, Clement Greenberg insisted that Louis's
"suppression of the difference between painted and unpainted
surfaces causes pictorial space to leak through-or rather, to seem
about to leak through-the framing edges of the picture into the space
beyond them."*
'Pi'
is one of the earliest of the Unfurleds, a series of 150
heroic-sized paintings each characterized by symmetrical banks of
streaming color separated by an empty expanse of white. Despite the
simplicity and flatness of the design, the bleached white of the
canvas and the rivulets of color interact to create the illusion of
vibrant space. In 'Pi'
the progression
of color, warm-to-cool, furthers the sense of recession, as through a
valley, towards a luminous void. Occupying two-thirds of the canvas,
that void becomes the dominant element, uniting as well as dividing
the sides. In such paintings, Louis aspired to a sublime purity of
expression, cleared of the rhetorical and nonessential - a singularly
visual experience.
* Art International (May 1960)
text is taken from:
© NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF ART
or visit their web site:
http://ncartmuseum.org/index.html
