“Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-1975,” organized by the American Federation of Arts, is stopping at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in between visits to Denver and Nashville. It’s a smallish show, with some good large pieces by Jules Olitiski and Helen Frankenthaler that we don’t see enough of here, and some looks forward to minimalism as represented by Frank Stella. Some of our hometown stars like Alma Thomas don’t get much space, but the Smithsonian includes a pair of her works in a connecting hallway.
What astonished me was a painting by Larry Poons from 1963, Han-San Cadence, shown in the room with other successors to the heyday of color field painting, the Louis/Noland “post-painterly abstraction.” On a field of dark mustard yellow canvas (achieved with fabric dye), 30-cm ovals in just two colors, cyan and dark azure, are arranged in an irregular rectilinear pattern. Each oval is oriented on either a 45° or 135° axis. The pattern of dots is almost but not quite symmetrical on both the vertical axis and the southwest-to-northeast diagonal. As our eyes look for patterns in the spots, shifting from one area to another, afterimages of blue on orange dance and shimmer. After spending some time with the piece, we notice that there is a faint grain to the shading of the canvas (perhaps the result of age) suggesting wood, an organic foil to the otherwise mechano-digital ovals that whisper of secret codes and punch cards.