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In Short
“I’m a one-shot painter.”
– Kenneth NolandPainted in 1979, Kenneth's Noland Resect is an important example of the discrete series of asymmetrical shaped canvases that the artist made between the late 1970s and early 1980s. Commonly referred to as Surfboards paintings, these slender, irregularly shaped canvases harken back to Noland's seminal series of Needle Diamonds from the 1960s, all the while exemplifying the remarkable degree of complexity and experimentation with which the artist was pushing his practice to new heights. Resect is notably among the last paintings created with Noland's highly controlled and premeditated staining method, whereby any modification or revision is nearly impossible due to his application of thinned paint onto raw canvas. Created just two years after the artist's first ever retrospective, held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1977, this work speaks to a defining moment in Noland's career.
The Washington Color School
Noland was a key member of the Washington Color School, a group of abstract painters based in Washington, D.C., who emerged in the late-1950s and flourished to great acclaim in the 1960s.
Many of the artists had been included in Clement Greenberg’s Post-painterly Abstraction exhibition in 1964 alongside likeminded artists such as Frank Stella, Helen Frankenthaler and Sam Francis, yet it was the 1965 exhibition The Washington Color Painters that traveled from the now defunct Washington Gallery of Modern Art to such institutions as the Walker Art Center which truly cemented the group’s reputation. While the exhibition included the work of Noland, Morris Louis, Paul Reed, Howard Mehring, Thomas Downing, and Gene Davis, the broader Washington Color School also came to encompass artist such as Sam Gilliam and Alma Thomas.
Cover of the exhibition catalogue The Washington Color Paintings, Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, D.C., 1965.
United by an emphasis on color and a keen sense of experimentation, these artists represented a cool and reduced aesthetic that served as a counterpoint to the New York School. Rejecting the painterly gestures and heavily worked surfaces of Abstract Expressionism, many of the Washington Color School artists embraced novel painting techniques that both elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color Field painting. The “soak stain” method that Frankenthaler had pioneered in the early 1950s served as a model for many of these artists in their pursuit of exploring the materiality of painting. Noland, along with Louis, was among the first to learn of her novel technique when Clement Greenberg introduced them to her work during a studio visit in 1953.
Greenberg considered these color fields as the purest form of modern painting: effectively opening up the possibilities of Jackson Pollock’s revolutionary drip technique, the stain technique enabled a “purely optical” experience of painting. The semi-transparent expanses of variegated color that stain the canvas weave draw attention to the flatness of the picture plane, freeing it from the shackles of illusory, pictorial space and instead emphasizing it as a literal, physical surface. The object-nature of painting was further expanded upon by Noland, as well as Sam Gilliam, in their radical reconsideration of the very shape and structure of the canvas itself.In Focus
Resect exemplifies how Nolan continued to explore the formal and conceptual boundaries of his shaped canvases that had garnered him widespread critical acclaim as one of the most innovative purveyors of American abstraction. Towards the late 1970s, Noland, having experimented with a range of unconventional canvas shapes, began a discrete series of asymmetrical canvases often referred to as his Surfboard paintings.
These works represented a powerful extension of Noland's seminal Needle and Diamond shaped canvases from the 1960s. As in those early works, Noland here investigates the notion of painting as a discrete object: imbuing the canvas with an active role in energizing the composition, the border of the canvas to become as structurally important as its center. Resect, with its dynamic attenuated form and peripheral bands of color, dramatizes the relationship and creates an exacting, yet sophisticated, balance of color and structure – bringing Noland’s exploration of the painterly frontier to its apotheosis.
Kenneth Noland in his South Salem, New York studio, 1982. Artwork © Estate of Kenneth Noland
"I finally came to the idea of everything being unbalanced, nothing vertical, nothing horizontal, nothing parallel."
– Kenneth NolandWorking with a series of templates, Noland imposed the canvas shape onto an unstretched canvas and soaked it with heavily diluted paint. Resect is notably one of the last canvasses Noland completed with this “soak-stain” technique. The concentrated simplicity and linearity of Resect presents the bands of color and the edges of the artwork to the viewer as if their dramatic confrontation is a force of nature rather than a result of the artist’s creation, emphasizing the complex interchange between painting and surface.
Provenance
André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Private Collection
Sotheby's, New York, February 19, 1988, lot 186
Private Collection, Aukrug
Private Collection (acquired from the above)
Christie’s, New York, September 26, 2013, lot 126
Private Collection
Almine Rech Gallery, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present ownerExhibited
Paris, Almine Rech Gallery, Kenneth Noland, April 18 - May 25, 2019
116
Resect
signed, titled and dated ""RESECT" Kenneth Noland 1979” on the reverse
acrylic on shaped canvas
21 1/4 x 119 1/4 in. (54 x 302.9 cm)
Painted in 1979.
Estimate
$200,000 - 300,000
John McCord
Head of Day Sale, Morning Session
New York
+1 212 940 1261
20th c. & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session
New York Auction 2 July 2020
101
Anne Truitt
Parva XIII
Estimate $20,000 - 30,000
Sold for $93,750
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102
Ed Moses
Untitled
Estimate $15,000 - 20,000
Sold for $16,250
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103
James Turrell
Hologram (IV 01)
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $50,000
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104
Lee Bontecou
Untitled
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
Sold for $105,000
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105
Ad Reinhardt
Untitled
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
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106
Mark Tobey
Untitled
Estimate $15,000 - 20,000
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107
Hans Hofmann
Yellow Glow
Estimate $25,000 - 35,000
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108
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $102,500
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109
Robert Motherwell
Untitled
Estimate $20,000 - 30,000
Sold for $23,750
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110
Helen Frankenthaler
1973 (Thanksgiving Day)
Estimate $15,000 - 20,000
Sold for $47,500
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111
Ed Clark
Untitled
Estimate $20,000 - 30,000
Sold for $47,500
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112
Ed Clark
Untitled
Estimate $20,000 - 30,000
Sold for $47,500
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113
Mary Corse
Untitled (Black White Inner Band, Beveled)
Estimate $220,000 - 280,000
Sold for $250,000
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114
Tony Smith
Spitball
Estimate $50,000 - 70,000
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115
Robert Ryman
Bent Line Drawing 20" x 20"
Estimate $50,000 - 70,000
Sold for $56,250
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116
Kenneth Noland
Resect
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
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117
Carlos Cruz-Diez
Chromointerférence Mécanique
Estimate $80,000 - 100,000
Sold for $90,000
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118
Yayoi Kusama
Flower
Estimate $18,000 - 22,000
Sold for $20,000
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119
Robert Morris
Untitled (Hypnerotomachia Series)
Estimate $18,000 - 22,000
Sold for $68,750
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120
Louise Nevelson
Young Tree XXIV
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $110,000
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121
George Rickey
Broken Line (Two Lines Horizontal)
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $40,000
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122
John Chamberlain
Untitled
Estimate $12,000 - 18,000
Sold for $15,000
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123
Lucas Samaras
Chair with Reclining Curvaceous V
Estimate $70,000 - 100,000
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124
Deborah Butterfield
Chestnut
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
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125
Julian Schnabel
Insomnolent Brown Trimmed in Mink
Estimate $120,000 - 180,000
Sold for $250,000
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126
Julian Schnabel
Lazarus, Second Painting for Aldo Moro
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $435,000
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127
Mary Heilmann
Lil Totem
Estimate $50,000 - 70,000
Sold for $137,500
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128
This lot is no longer available.
129
Philip Guston
Untitled (double-sided drawing)
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
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130
Jack Tworkov
Torso
Estimate $10,000 - 15,000
Sold for $9,375
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131
André Breton
Four works: (i-iv) Untitled
Estimate $15,000 - 20,000
Sold for $16,250
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132
Joseph Cornell
Sandsifter Box
Estimate $180,000 - 250,000
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133
Fernand Léger
Untitled Composition
Estimate $18,000 - 22,000
Sold for $28,750
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134
Jacques Lipchitz
Study for Pastorale
Estimate $12,000 - 18,000
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135
Henri Laurens
Femme couchée
Estimate $20,000 - 30,000
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136
Henri Laurens
La jeune soeur
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
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137
Fernando Botero
Woman with Serpent
Estimate $200,000 - 250,000
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138
Fernando Botero
Danseuse équilibriste à cheval
Estimate $35,000 - 50,000
Sold for $37,500
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139
Wifredo Lam
Untitled
Estimate $120,000 - 180,000
Sold for $150,000
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140
Loló Soldevilla
Sin Título
Estimate $30,000 - 40,000
Sold for $52,500
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141
José Gurvich
Untitled
Estimate $25,000 - 35,000
Sold for $77,500
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142
Tomás Sánchez
Meditador
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $399,000
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143
Gerhard Richter
Onkel Rudi
Estimate $18,000 - 22,000
Sold for $21,250
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144
Anselm Kiefer
Lilith
Estimate $70,000 - 100,000
Sold for $68,750
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145
Kenny Scharf
Coconut Star
Estimate $25,000 - 35,000
Sold for $50,000
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146
Kenny Scharf
Spacemeats
Estimate $45,000 - 55,000
Sold for $81,250
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147
Jim Dine
2 Moons
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $81,250
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148
Alighiero Boetti
Entre loup et chien
Estimate $20,000 - 30,000
Sold for $30,000
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149
Tom Wesselmann
Study for Face Aquatint
Estimate $25,000 - 35,000
Sold for $22,500
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150
Richard Pettibone
Andy Warhol, Marlon, 1963
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $37,500
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151
Ed Ruscha
S
Estimate $15,000 - 20,000
Sold for $27,500
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152
Richard Artschwager
Pull
Estimate $25,000 - 35,000
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153
Al Held
Untitled
Estimate $10,000 - 15,000
Sold for $21,250
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154
Ralph Humphrey
Station
Estimate $20,000 - 30,000
Sold for $22,500
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155
Larry Poons
Untitled
Estimate $20,000 - 30,000
Sold for $200,000
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156
Paul Jenkins
Phenomena Forecast of Fire
Estimate $25,000 - 35,000
Sold for $75,000
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157
Patrick Hughes
Stairs to the Stars
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $112,500
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