"Drift 2," 1966.
In a nutshell, here's the art history of the Dot as I see it:
1. Big Bang
2. Mosaic
3. Pointillism
4. Geometric Abstraction
5. Mosaic Today
6. Pointillism Today
For me Geometric Abstraction, centered largely on the first half
of the 20th century with significant extensions in both directions, is the
crucible in which the reductive conventions I accept as axiomatic were formulated.
One of the seminal moments in the history of Geometric Abstraction was the
much maligned celebration of the shortest lived movement in the history
of art - MOMA's 1965 Op Art orgy, "The Responsive Eye."
This shotgun exhibition featured 123 works by 97 artists, many of whom have
been long since forgotten. Yet among them were every major artist of the
period. Of particular interest to me, this includes Bridget Riley, Victor
Vasarely and my idol, Ellsworth Kelly.
I think of this work as the basic research from which artists today draw.
From Vasarely's architectonic elements to Kelly's study of form and color
to Agnes Martin's study of line to Riley's study of dynamism and later color,
geometry and pattern artists like Chuck Close and Rob Silvers accrete their
own figurative abstractions.
In a 1992 BBC broadcast Riley made this fantastic statement:
"At the end of his life, Monet painted his largest, grandest and in
many ways greatest paintings about virtually nothing; about looking into
a huge expanse of water set with a few lilies in which unexpected colors
appear in the depths, or elusively in reflections. It is a most mysterious,
extraordinary subject in which he invests all his experience and power.
In the end there seems to be hardly any subject matter left - only content."
