Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty – The Art of Earthworks
Art critics have searched for years to codify the definitive characteristics of American Color Field painting. Among other names, Color Field painting has been alternately known as Post-Painterly Abstraction, New Abstraction, and Abstract Imagism. The influential art critic Clement Greenberg, a friend of many of the most prominent Color Field painters, used the term post-Painterly Abstraction. By this he meant the “blurred, broken, loose definition of color and contour.”
Greenberg further differentiates the Color Field painters from the Abstract Expressionists by noting “the move towards a physical openness of design, or towards linear clarity, or both.” Certainly artists like Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland all exhibited an openness of design in many of their works. Prime examples of this quality can be seen in Frankenthaler’s The Human Edge, Louis’s Unfolding Light, and Noland’s Sunshine.
Linear clarity is also present The Human Edge and in virtually all of the works of Kenneth Noland. Linear clarity is less emphasized in the works of Morris Louis, whose overlapping, blended colors are one of the most distinctive aspects of his masterful mature works.
The high-keyed, lucid color applied as pure hues rather than contrasts of light and dark also separates the Color Field painters from the typical Abstract Expressionist painting. The role of color, of course, is the most definitive aspect of Color Field painting in general. The innovative techniques of color field painters are not an end in themselves, but a means to get at color. Color is, indeed, the chief and universal language of the Color Field painters.
The names New Abstraction and Abstract Imagism, which were applied to Color Field painting by various art critics for convenience, are less descriptive than Greenberg’s term Post-Painterly Abstraction. Even these more generic names did, however, separate the works of the Color Field painters from Pop Art and other movements that combine color and optical effects with collage and other types of media. Color Field painting specifically continued the tradition of painting in its purist form.
Color Field painting is further separated from Pop Art and a number of other contemporary movements in ideal and aim. Color Field painting can be viewed as conservative and apolitical in comparison with the cynical, immoral view of life put forth by Pop Art. The use of amorphous, simplified or geometric shapes and the overwhelming emphasis on color makes the works of Frankenthaler, Louis and Noland universal in their language and message.
The Spiral Jetty also contains an element of performance-based art which is absent in many forms of modern art. Other modern artists often worked in private and even kept their methods secret. The site-specific aspects of Earthworks and the momentous scales made them inherently public performances in spite of their characteristic isolated locations. Furthermore, the outdoor location of the Spiral Jetty emphasized the impact of natural forces and the temporality of art and life
Resource Author Francisco Rodriguez H.
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