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APPRECIATING NOLAND

PAPERS

ALTHOUGH NOLAND HAD produced works on paper on occasion prior to 1976, that year marked the beginning of an intense phase of paper and printmaking which occupied him throughout the '80s. Many papers were made in his Vermont and New York state studios, others were produced on location around the world. The hand made papers and monotypes are a key to the development of Noland's painting in the '80s.

Their radical character is belied by seemingly familiar formats: many of the papers use parallel bands and centered images within the rectangular formats of the traditional easel painting. This has suggested to some that Noland was repeating himself. If he was, it was to focus the better on something new. The familiar layouts were dictated by methods and materials as well as the necessity of framing under glass. They're neutral armatures for extraordinary material handling. The "papers" aren't applications of color to a ground in a traditional sense. They're all material. Color in the handmade "papers" is in the paper itself, figure and ground merge into a common substance.

In the later monotypes, color and embossed relief is applied upon and into handmade paper. Surfaces of the monotypes are enhanced by relief pattern: diagonal lines, concentric diamonds and the like. Parts of this pattern are picked out with applied color; impressed areas are scribbled upon, saturated, accented, left bare. Color enhances and represses, merges and separates. Above all, it dematerializes the material. The monotype resemble panels of beautiful fabric rather than traditional prints or paintings. These beautiful objects tremble near the limits of pictorial art. They're among the great works of the '80s.