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APPRECIATING NOLAND

DOORS

THE PROBLEM OF figure and ground was resolved brilliantly in the "doors" (1987-89), Noland's next series. In these painted constructions, Noland's characteristic bands and stripes are replaced by canvas stretched over narrow door panels. Paint application is carried forward from the '80s "chevrons": complex applications of clear, glass-like gels -- often containing pearlescent, metallic, and interference pigments -- scrape and slide across colored underpainting. Groups of painted panels are assembled side by side, interspersed and surrounded by coloured plastic strips to make a constructed picture. When finished the "doors" are some of the first abstract paintings which cannot be framed.

Because of their obvious construction, the "doors" are immediate and physical in a way that supercedes Noland's previous flatness. Although their final configuration is often close to a traditional square, the total effect is given a new and more emphatic immediacy by the literal character of the individual panels. In comparison to them, Noland's radical horizontal stripe paintings of the late '60s, and even his "shapes" and "surfboards," seem illusionistic. Yet for all their immediacy, the "doors" are not reliefs or sculptures. They're a new kind of picture. They gleam against the wall.