Red, Yellow, Blue I, 1963
a/c, 3 joined panels, 90" x 90" overall
Perhaps my favorite Kelly piece is his 1990 work, Orange Red
Relief (for Delphine Seyrig.) But I chose to show this work because
like Seine, 1951, Colors for a Large Wall, 1951,
Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance, 1953 and other works I
think it directly creates the aesthetic current that allowed Leon Harmon
to make his 1971/3 reductive leap.
It is, of course, extremely likely that Harmon was not particularly familiar
with Kelly's work, but even if he had never seen it I believe it still participated
in the creation of a cultural stream that Harmon eventually floated down.
And, in fact, along with works by Indiana, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, a Warhol
grid piece and others, a Kelly sculpture was displayed on the side of the
New York State Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair. So the notion
that Harmon had at least a background exposure to this sensibility is inherently
plausible.
As for Orange Red Relief (for Delphine Seyrig) and so many
of Kelly's more recent shaped works, I find the dynamic energy he finds
in the most reductive of forms nothing short of extraordinary.
