ELLSWORTH KELLYAttempting to arrive at pure painting,
the Post-Painterly Abstractionists distilled painting down to its es-
sential elements, producing spare, elemental images. An example of
one variant of Post-Painterly Abstraction,hard-edge painting,is Red
Blue Green (FIG. 36-10) by Ellsworth Kelly(b. 1923). With its
razor-sharp edges and clearly delineated shapes, this work is com-
pletely abstract and extremely simple compositionally. Further, the
painting contains no suggestion of the illusion of depth—the color
shapes appear resolutely two-dimensional.
FRANK STELLA Another artist associated with the hard-edge
painters of the 1960s is Frank Stella(b. 1936). In works such as
Mas o Menos(More or Less;FIG. 36-11), Stella eliminated many of
the variables associated with painting. His simplified images of thin,
evenly spaced pinstripes on colored grounds have no central focus,
no painterly or expressive elements, only limited surface modula-
tion, and no tactile quality. Stella’s systematic painting illustrates
Greenberg’s insistence on purity in art. The artist’s famous comment
on his work, “What you see is what you see,” reinforces the notions
that painters interested in producing advanced art must reduce their
work to its essential elements and that the viewer must acknowledge
that a painting is simply pigment on a flat surface.
HELEN FRANKENTHALER Color-field painting,another
variant of Post-Painterly Abstraction, also emphasized painting’s ba-
sic properties. However, rather than produce sharp, unmodulated976 Chapter 36 EUROPE AND AMERICA AFTER 194536-11Frank Stella,Mas o
Menos (More or Less), 1964. Metallic
powder in acrylic emulsion on
canvas, 9 10 13 8 –^12 . Musée
National d’Art Moderne, Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris (purchase
1983 with participation of Scaler
Foundation).
Stella tried to achieve purity in
painting using evenly spaced
pinstripes on colored grounds.
His canvases have no central
focus, no painterly or expressive
elements, and no tactile quality.
36-10Ellsworth Kelly,
Red Blue Green,1963. Oil on
canvas, 6 115 – 8 11 3 –^78 . Museum
of Contemporary Art, San Diego
(gift of Dr. and Mrs. Jack M. Farris).
Hard-edge painting is one variant
of Post-Painterly Abstraction. Kelly
used razor-sharp edges and clearly
delineated areas of color to distill
painting to its essential two-
dimensional elements.
1 ft.1 ft.36-11ARILEY,
Fission,1963.