After a visit to New York in April 1953, where they saw the recent paintings of Helen Frankenthaler, Washington-based friends Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland began to similarly stain raw canvases with diluted pigment, rather than apply it with a brush. Experimenting with different painting techniques and media, compositional formats and canvas sizes in the nine remaining years before his untimely death (from lung cancer), Louis produced an astonishingly large body of work. These paintings are divided into three basic series: the Veils (1954–60), the Unfurleds (Summer 1960–January/February 1961), and the Stripes (January/February 1961–Summer 1962).
Alpha-Pi is one of about 150 Unfurleds he created, generally on mural-size canvases (this one measures over 8 feet by 14 feet). In all of them, irregular rivulets of different colors flow diagonally down toward the lower center of the canvas, but never quite meet; the center of the unprimed canvas remains blank. Heavily diluted, the poured colors soak into the canvas, becoming one with the surface, and maintain the flatness of the modern picture plane. Color retains its optical purity (since it is not used to describe or define something else) and there is no sense of narrative, image, or perspectival space as in traditional painting. Eschewing illusionistic references, the artist forces the viewer to focus solely on the painting's formal elements-color, size, and shape and the vibrant, light-filled space they inhabit.
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Marking: Estate signature (on reverse): M. Louis 391
the artist, Washington, D.C. (1960–d. 1962; his estate, from 1962); [Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, until 1967; sold to MMA]
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Three Contemporary Artists," May 16–June 16, 1968, no catalogue.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940–1970," October 18, 1969–February 8, 1970, no. 244.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "Masterpieces of Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 16–November 1, 1970, unnumbered cat. (p. 118).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "20th Century Accessions, 1967–1974," March 7–April 23, 1974, no catalogue.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Patterns of Collecting: Selected Acquisitions, 1965–1975," December 6, 1975–March 23, 1976, unnum. brochure (p. 50).
Henry Geldzahler. "Reports of the Departments. Contemporary Art." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. Ninety-Eighth Annual Report of the Trustees 27 (October 1968), pp. 81–82, ill.
R[ita]. S[imon]. "Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, and Anthony Caro at Metropolitan Museum." Arts Magazine 42 (Summer 1968), p. 56.
Hilton Kramer. "The Metropolitan Takes Another Step Forward." New York Times (May 25, 1968), p. 31, ill. (installation photo, Exh. New York 1968).
Thomas M. Folds inMasterpieces of Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. New York, [1970], p. 118, ill. (color), dates it 1961.
Lillian Freedgood. An Enduring Image: American Painting from 1665. New York, 1970, ill. p. 364.
Michael Fried. Morris Louis. New York, [1971], colorpl. 144.
Dore Ashton. "From the 1960s to the Present Day." The Genius of American Painting. Ed. John Wilmerding. New York, 1973, ill. p. 310 (incorrect orientation).
Nicolas Calas. "Quatre champions de la 'field painting': Morris Louis, le théatral." XXe Siècle 41 (December 1973), ill. p. 132.
Walter Darby Bannard. "Morris Louis and the Restructured Picture." Studio International 187 (July–August 1974), ill. p. 20 (color).
Henry Geldzahler in "Twentieth Century Art." The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Notable Acquisitions, 1965–1975. New York, 1975, p. 206, ill.
Olga Raggio et al. Patterns of Collecting: Selected Acquisitions 1965–1975. Explanatory Texts. Exh. brochure, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1975, p. 50.
Edward Lucie-Smith. Art Today: From Abstract Expressionism to Superrealism. Oxford, 1977, p. 337, colorpl. 259.
Peter Selz. Art in Our Times: A Pictorial History,1890–1980. New York, 1981, no. 1251, ill. (color).
Diane Upright. Morris Louis, the Complete Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné. New York, 1985, p. 225, no. 417, ill. (color) pp. 116, 171.
Piri Halasz. "Manhattan Museums: The 1940s vs. the 1980s; Part Two: The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Arts Magazine 59 (March 1985), p. 93.
Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque et al. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 9, The United States of America. New York, 1987, p. 147, colorpl. 112.
Robert Hughes. The Shock of the New: The Hundred–Year History of Modern Art–Its Rise, Its Dazzling Achievement, Its Fall. 4th ed. [1st ed., 1980]. New York, 1996, p. 156, colorpl. 100.
Michael Fried. Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews. Chicago, 1998, colorpl. 4.
Robert Linsley. "Mirror Travel in the Yucatan: Robert Smithson, Michael Fried, and the New Critical Drama." RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics no. 37 (Spring 2000), p. 12, fig. 6.
Claudine Humblet. The New American Abstraction 1950–1970. Milan, 2007, vol. 1, ill. p. 155 (color).
Michael Fried. "Jeff Wall, Wittgenstein, and the Everyday." Critical Inquiry 33 (Spring 2007), pp. 525–26, fig. 10.
Michael Fried. Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before. New Haven and London, 2007, p. 81, fig. 41 (color).
Diarmuid Costello. "On the Very Idea of a 'Specific' Medium: Michael Fried and Stanley Cavell on Painting and Photography as Arts." Critical Inquiry 34 (Winter 2008), p. 275 n. 3, fig. 1.
Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, p. 531, ill. (color), colorpl. 474.
Max Hollein. Modern and Contemporary Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2019, ill. pp. 129 and jacket (color, overall and detail).
Norman Lewis (American, New York 1909–1979 New York)
1978
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