American College of Orgonomy

This spring several ACO members traveled to Manhattan to enjoy the work of American abstract painter and sculptor Kenneth Noland. The April 18 preview of the exhibition Colors took place at the Ameringer Yohe gallery located at 20 West 57th Street. Paintings from the artist’s most recent series Mysteries were showcased.

Mr. Noland, a longtime friend and supporter of the ACO, as well as a member of its Business Advisory Board, has been recognized as an artist of the highest rank for more than 40 years. Belonging to the “post-painterly abstractionist school,” he arrived on the art scene in the late 1950s with an exhibition of his concentric circle paintings at French and Company. He went on to become a featured artist in the United States pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1964. His first retrospective exhibition was presented at New York’s Jewish Museum the following year. Since then, Mr. Noland’s work has been the subject of more than 130 one-man shows, including a significant traveling retrospective exhibition organized by New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 1977.

According to art watchers, Mysteries revisits the format of Mr. Noland’s early Circles paintings, but with striking differences in color, scale and surface. All of the new Mysteries feature concentric circular bands centered within square canvases. The works are quite grand, ranging in size from four to six feet. Blends of rich color energize the paintings, along with a varied application of paint. Amazingly, those who have seen the paintings report they provoke a powerful physical response in the viewer.

New York magazine art critic Michael Brenson writes of Mysteries: “Against the transparent spread of the rolled and sprayed paint, the touch of the brush has an intimately physical yet almost cosmic charge. The result of the interplay of colors, forms, and techniques is not the equilibrated flat-ness of Noland’s earlier versions, but rather a pulsating, throbbing dynamism that suggests a new being or a planet in the process of emerging. Through an intense concentration on the language of painting, Noland offers an experience of nature that verges ever closer to the sublime.”

Presently, a major retrospective of Mr. Noland’s work is taking place. Co-organized by the Naples Museum of Art, Naples Florida, and the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland Maine, the exhibition Kenneth Noland Themes and Variations, 1958-2000 is comprised of more than 40 works chosen from public and private collections. It surveys the major phases of the artist’s career, emphasizing Mysteries (1999-present). It also includes important examples from Circles (1956-62), Chevrons (1962-64), Diamonds (1964-69), Stripes (1967-70), Plaids (1971-74), Shaped Paintings (1974-81), Painterly Chevrons (1983-87), Doors (1987-89) and Flares (1990-95). The exhibit began its tour at the Naples Museum of Art from March 1 to June 2 and moved to the Farnsworth Art Museum on June 30. It will run through October 13, 2002.