Fly the Wild

2017

Not on view

Fly the Wild is exemplary of Whitney’s vibrant, color-blocked, and music-inspired work from the past twenty-five years. The artist arrived at this particular format in the early 1990s: a square canvas in certain prescribed dimensions, a brightly hued palette, and four lateral bands of rectangular, off-square fields of color bisected by thinner, horizontal stripes in similar shades. Beginning always at the top left corner of the canvas, Whitney applies areas of oil paint and works to the right, then down, taking time to see how each block of color reacts with the next. The results are sumptuous and lyrical hymns to the art of painting and speak to the medium’s history as a field of multisensory or synesthetic possibilities.

Artwork Details

Overview

Inscriptions and Markings

Provenance

References

Title: Fly the Wild
Artist: Stanley Whitney (American, born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1946)
Date: 2017
Medium: Oil on linen canvas
Dimensions: 72 × 72 in. (182.9 × 182.9 cm)
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Gift of Julie and Jeffrey Loria, 2017
Object Number: 2017.388
Rights and Reproduction: © Stanley Whitney
Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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Yellow Changing, Stanley Whitney American, Color aquatint — Yellow Changing
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Untitled, Stanley Whitney American, Single color etching — Untitled
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Tables for Ladies, Edward Hopper American, Oil on canvas — Tables for Ladies
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