October
Kenneth Noland American
Not on view
October belongs to the first of Noland’s two extended explorations of the elemental shape of the circle. Placing the large canvas on his studio’s floor (in knowing emulation of Jackson Pollock’s method), he drew the edge of each circle with a pencil attached to a string and anchored in the center. The canvas’s dimensions determined the size of the outermost circle, suggesting Noland’s preoccupation with proportional relationships, a concern often associated with Minimalism. The painter accentuated the flatness of the unprimed canvas by diluting his acrylic paint so the weave would absorb it (a technique he adopted after seeing Helen Frankenthaler’s stained canvases). The concentric circles evoke a range of associations—a bull’s-eye, a globe, a giant eyeball—while the density near the center suggests a gravitational pull.
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![Circle I [I-38]](/Rodan/dist/svg/no-image-image-related.svg)
