The Bohemian Grove
Hard-Edge
Lorser Feitelson
1948
Oil on Canvas
Lorser Feitelson, one of the founding members of the Hard-Edge Painting movement, created a series of painting entitled Magical Space Forms. Included in this series is this oil on canvas painted in 1948. The tightly fitted geometric forms create a simple yet distinctive landscape while the use of contrasting colors aids in the depth and movement. The large geometric forms appear to be an entity that occupies it’s own space.
Jackie Carson
1980
Acrylic On Canvas
This figurative hard-edge painting by Jackie Carson depicts a desert sunset in the mountains of Arizona. What’s unique about this work is that it actually represents something tangible. Most hard edge paintings do not contain a landscape and are more an exercise of color. These dramatic and abrupt shifts in from blue to orange hues lead the viewer to believe the sun is actually setting on the mountainside. Carson’s carefully selected palate creates an illusion of depth. Jackie Carson labels himself as a “designer” instead of an artist. This work in particular is often reproduced in modern furniture galleries.
Frank Stella
1962
Alkyd painting on canvas
The title of this piece, Hyena Stomp, came from a song by the American jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton. Stella was thinking about the syncopation while working on this painting. The composition of this piece is divided by diagonal lines by the semi-diagonal at the upper right has been displaced upwards by the width of one stripe and does not quite meet at the center. Each color is applied the same number of times. It bounces conjure converging forms to suggest a complex prism of color; Upon closer inspection, one notices that the painting is completely asymmetrical.
Karl Benjamin
1957
Oil on canvas
I this piece is considered one of Karl Benjamin's best paintings and has recently one new renown after becoming a centerpiece of a traveling exhibition birth of cool. This artist uses somber blues, sleek forms and shadows are now Emblematic of postwar American-style. Some of the color forms in this piece look like old television screens. The artist was playing with opposing colors and forms a great eventually engaging picture.
Lorser Feitelson
1959
Oil on Canvas
As Lorser Feitelson evolved into a hard edge painter, he began to embrace ideals of nonrepresentational minimalism. In Dichotomic Organization Feitelson juxtaposes warm and cool colors with the addition of a stark, black figure to add further contrast. While the left half of the painting is dominated by a warm red-orange, the right half is disturbed by the black abstraction, segueing in the opposing blue hue that permeates into the space.
Karl Benjamin
1958
Oil on Canvas
Karl Benjamin, an artist who was known to explore the relationship of colors and hard-edge shapes has created a busy yet bold piece. The lines are brazenly defined throughout the composition giving form to a pattern of interconnected geometric shapes. The busy composition appears to have an organized layout underneath giving order to the image. The shapes play with the colors as it creates an optical rhythm, causing the eye to wonder throughout the canvas.
Ellsworth Kelly
1963
Oil on Canvas
Red Blue Green display's Ellsworth Kelly's idea of the viewer interacting with color. As the painting lack's the hand of the artist, the viewer is faced with two flat forms of color that contrast the flat green background. As green separates the forms, the complimentary red form becomes particularly striking. The idea of color temperature also comes into play in this work, as warm colors are thought to advance while cool colors recede. Altogether, these ideas work to challenge the viewer's perception of space through color.
Red Blue Green
Jack Beal
1969
Oil on Canvas
These contrasting vertical and horizontal lines of colors make up Jack Beal’s Table Painting #6. A modern, straightforward title is very fitting for this work. Even though this piece is a logical extension of the modernist tradition of painting, many critics were confused with Beal’s art. Critics had to consider whether or not this contemporary work belonged to the abstract, modernist direction painting had taken in the 20th century. Hard-edge paintings (like the ones shown on our page) use contours to clearly define boundaries and isolate objects. In contrast, soft-edge paintings have porous boundaries that engage viewers in an attempt to resolve forms.
Table Painting #6
Opposing #15
Frederick Hammersley
1959
Oil on Linen
Fredericks Hammersley piece, Opposing #15, is a staple of the hard edge painting movement. By avoiding balance between colors and using non-interactive shapes, Hammersley avoids being labeled a color field painter, though this piece does contain the visual symmetry of color field painting. Hard edge painting at his time represented a cultural shift in attitude. It was a new phase of American influence that replaced a romantic and gestural aesthetic with a graphic, Post-Painterly abstract one
Magical Space Forms
Hard Edge Landscape
Hyena Stomp
Black Pillars
Dichotomic Organization
Stage II
Hard-edge Painting was a term, created by California art critic Jules Langsner, to denote the works of a group of Los Angeles painters in 1958, as an alternate term to ‘geometric abstraction.’ Referring back to the works of artists such as Josef Albers and Piet Mondrian, these artists’ paintings featured compositions of geometric or organic forms which were made in broad, flat colors, were defined by precise, sharp edges, and held a tendency to avoid the inclusion of pictorial depth. They featured an economy of form, fullness of color, and neatness of surface. The works of the hard-edge painters stand in stark contrast to the painterly and gestural forms of abstract expressionistic works of their time period, which prompted them to create their style.
The hard-edge painting movement’s first exhibition, curated by Jules Langsner, Four Abstract Classicists, was in 1959 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and it included works from John McLaughlin, Lorser Feitelson, Karl Benjamin, and Frederick Hammersley. Despite how they did not have a manifesto, nor were a unified group, the hard-edge painters’ approach to abstract painting grew and became widespread in the 1960s, and they even had a second major exhibition, California Hard-edge painting, in 1964 at the Pavilion gallery in Balboa, California. This second exhibition was also curated by Langsner and included works from artists such as Helen Lundeberg, John Coplans, Larry Bell, Dorothy Waldman, and others.
The hard-edge and its qualities can be found in any painting; however the application of its qualities towards a unique form of abstract expressionism incited curiosity and its further development, even past the new millennium.
The Meschers
Ellsworth Kelly
1951
Cut and Pasted Paper
Ellsworth Kelly was a pioneer of hard edge painting. In this 1951 work he arranged cut up paper like they were brush strokes laid by chance. Five seemingly random vertical registers can be identified containing random cut out forms of blue only two alternating colors. Kelly grew to reach his most influential period in the early 1960s when he was the clear leader in his own circle of painters.
Bibliography
*Marter, Joan M. The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011. Google Book Search. Web. 5 Nov. 2015.
-This book provided insight into the nature of hard-edge painting, a little history behind its naming, and some of the notable artists that are considered a part of the movement.
*Westfall, Stephen. "The Hard-Edge Sign." Art In America 101.4 (2013): 94-99. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 5 Nov. 2015.
-The pieces narrows in on a style of painting that employs flat colors and geometric forms called Hard-edge painting, a term from Jules Langsner, a former art critic for the Newspaper "Los Angeles Times." The piece talks about artists who paint in the 'Hard-edge' style such as Karl Benjamin, Oli Sihvonen, Sven Lukin and Ward Jackson. The pieces goes on to discuss the similarity between young painters who create compositions with grids and Pop-Minimalism.
*Cupchik, Gerald C., Oshin Vartanian,, Adrian Crawley, and David J. Mikulis. Viewing Artworks: Contributions of Cognitive Control and Perceptual Facilitation to Aesthetic Experience. Thesis. University of Toronto, Toronto, 2009. N.p.: Elsevier, n.d. Print.
-This article explores the boundaries art has on the cognitive mind. Colors and the forms they make are carefully examined.
*Royer, Catherine Mills. Recent Figurative Painting, Modernist or Traditional? Thesis. Ball State University, 1982. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
-This master’s thesis provides an in depth speculation on what exactly makes up modern art and questions it’s intentions.
*Loftus, John. "The Plastic Arts in the Sixties What Is It That Has Got Lost?" Art Journal 26.3 (1967): 240-45. JSTOR. Web. 4 Nov. 2015.
-While a general sense artistic style loomed over the mid-twentieth century, other smaller movements often created altered version of grander movements. The author claims that Abstract Expression and Analytic Cubism were the two most aspirational movements of the time, setting the goal of creating "viable modern plastic art." Loftus also claims that these two styles are drastically different, with Cubism taking a more sophisticated approach and Abstract Expressionism containing primitive in impulse (rather than in the paintings themselves). In turn, Loftus argues that groups appropriating Abstract Art have contributed to the decline of twentieth-century art movements.
*Ehrlers, S. (1996). Pacific Dreams: Currents of Surrealism and Fantasy in California Art. Performing Arts Journal, 18(1), 72-80.
-Ehrlers explores the art world after Surrealism, focusing on fantasy and art from California in particular through the exhibition Pacific Dreams. Surrealism was seen as a way of tapping into the unconscious with different artists taking different approaches to the style. As fantastical forms of art evolved, American artists began to focus on more abstract forms that eventually grew into the Abstract Expressionist movement and its future sub-styles.
*Feitelson, Lorser. "Explore the Era: Magical Space Forms." At the Getty Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Nov. 2015. <http://blogs.getty.edu/pacificstandardtime/explore-the-era/worksofart/magical-space-forms/>.
-Located on Getty’s website is a description by an unknown author explaining the painting Magical Space Forms by artist Lorser Feitelson. It addresses how Feitelson was one of the founding members of the hard-edge painting movement. The author explains how Feitelson's Magical Space Forms were part series that was part of an exhibition named Four Abstract Classicists. It’s explained that the artists used clear geometric shapes that seem flat but also three-dimensional.
*Karabenick, Julie. "An Interview with Artist Karl Benjamin." Geoform RSS2. N.p., May 2008. Web. 02 Nov. 2015. <http://geoform.net/interviews/an-interview-with-artist-karl-benjamin/>.
-In this article, the author, Julie Karabenick, interviews the artist Karl Benjamin about his work. She begins with his diverse paintings from the 1950’s-90’s, where they touch upon his recurring motifs throughout his paintings. He explains that his work deal with hard-edge and geometric forms while he had an emphasis on an exploration of color. They then touch on his education discussing his family life and his job as a teacher.
*Kelly, Ellsworth. "Ellsworth Kelly." BOMB: Painters & Writers 4 (1982): 21. JSTOR. New Art Publications. Web. 3 Nov. 2015.
Whitely, Nigel. "Cultural Imperialism." British Hard‐Edge Painting in the 1960s 22.2 (2008): 209-27. Taylor Francis Online. Web. 2 Nov. 2015.