Editing Color field (section)

=== Legacy: influences and influenced ===

[[Image:Richard Diebenkorn's painting 'Ocean Park No.129'.jpg|thumb|[[Richard Diebenkorn]], ''Ocean Park No.129'', 1984. The ''Ocean Park series'' connects his earlier [[abstract expressionist]] works with Color field painting. The influence of both [[Henri Matisse]] and [[Joan Miró]] is particularly strong in this painting.]]
[[File:Henri Matisse - View of Notre Dame. Paris, quai Saint-Michel, spring 1914.jpg|thumb|left|[[Henri Matisse]], ''[[View of Notre-Dame]]'', 1914, [[Museum of Modern Art]]. The Matisse paintings ''French Window at Collioure'' and ''View of Notre Dame''<ref name="MoMA1">[http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=78863 ''View of Notre Dame, 1914''] at [[MoMA]], retrieved December 18, 2008</ref> both from 1914 exerted tremendous influence on American color field painters in general (including [[Robert Motherwell]]'s ''Open Series'') and on Richard Diebenkorn's ''Ocean Park'' paintings specifically.]]
The ''painterly'' legacy of 20th-century painting is a long and intertwined mainstream of influences and complex interrelationships. The use of large opened fields of expressive color applied in generous painterly portions, accompanied by loose drawing (vague linear spots and/or figurative outline) can first be seen in the early 20th-century works of both [[Henri Matisse]] and [[Joan Miró]]. Matisse and Miró, as well as [[Pablo Picasso]], [[Paul Klee]], [[Wassily Kandinsky]], and [[Piet Mondrian]] directly influenced the abstract expressionists, the color field painters of post-painterly abstraction and the lyrical abstractionists. Late 19th-century Americans like [[Augustus Vincent Tack]] and [[Albert Pinkham Ryder]], along with early [[American Modernism|American Modernists]] like [[Georgia O'Keeffe]], [[Marsden Hartley]], [[Stuart Davis (painter)|Stuart Davis]], [[Arthur Dove]], and [[Milton Avery]]'s landscapes also provided important precedents and were influences on the abstract expressionists, the color field painters, and the lyrical abstractionists. Matisse paintings ''French Window at Collioure'', and ''[[View of Notre-Dame]]''<ref name="MoMA1" /> both from 1914 exerted tremendous influence on American color field painters in general, (including [[Robert Motherwell]]'s ''Open Series''), and on [[Richard Diebenkorn]]'s ''Ocean Park'' paintings specifically. According to [[art historian]] Jane Livingston, Diebenkorn saw both Matisse paintings in an exhibition in Los Angeles in 1966, and they had an enormous impact on him and his work.<ref name="Jane6267">Livingston, Jane. "The Art of [[Richard Diebenkorn]]". In: 1997–1998 Exhibition catalog, [[Whitney Museum of American Art]]. 62–67. {{ISBN|0-520-21257-6}}</ref> Jane Livingston says about the January 1966 Matisse exhibition that Diebenkorn saw in Los Angeles:
<blockquote>It is difficult not to ascribe enormous weight to this experience for the direction his work took from that time on. Two pictures he saw there reverberate in almost every ''Ocean Park'' canvas. View of Notre Dame and French Window at Collioure, both painted in 1914, were on view for the first time in the US.<ref name="Jane6267" /></blockquote>

Livingston goes on to say "Diebenkorn must have experienced French Window at Collioure, as an epiphany."<ref>Livingston, Jane.  ''The Art of [[Richard Diebenkorn]]''. In 1997–1998 Exhibition catalog, [[Whitney Museum of American Art]]. 64. {{ISBN|0-520-21257-6}},</ref>

Miró was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He pioneered the technique of staining; creating blurry, multi-colored cloudy backgrounds in thinned oil paint throughout the 1920s and 1930s; on top of which he added his calligraphy, characters and abundant lexicon of words, and imagery. [[Arshile Gorky]] openly admired Miró's work and painted Miró-like paintings, before finally discovering his own originality in the early 1940s. During the 1960s Miró painted large (abstract expressionist scale) radiant fields of vigorously brushed paint in blue, in white, and other monochromatic fields of colors; with blurry black orbs and calligraphic stone-like shapes, floating at random. These works resembled the color field paintings of the younger generation. Biographer [[Jacques Dupin]] said this about Miró's work of the early 1960s:
<blockquote> These canvases disclose affinities – Miró does not in the least attempt to deny this – with the researches of a new generation of painters. Many of these, [[Jackson Pollock]] for one, have acknowledged their debt to Miró. Miró in turn displays lively interest in their work and never misses an opportunity to encourage and support them. Nor does he consider it beneath his dignity to use their discoveries on some occasions.<ref>Dupin, Jacques. ''[[Joan Miró]] Life and Work''. New York City: Harry N. Abrams, 1962. 481</ref> </blockquote>

Taking its example from other European modernists like Miró, the color field movement encompasses several decades from the mid 20th century through the early 21st century. Color field painting actually encompasses three separate but related generations of painters. Commonly used terms to refer to the three separate but related groups are [[abstract expressionism]], [[post-painterly abstraction]], and [[lyrical abstraction]]. Some of the artists made works in all three eras, that relate to all of the three styles. Color field pioneers such as [[Jackson Pollock]], [[Mark Rothko]], [[Clyfford Still]], [[Barnett Newman]], [[John Ferren]], [[Adolph Gottlieb]], and [[Robert Motherwell]] are primarily thought of as abstract expressionists. Artists like [[Helen Frankenthaler]], [[Sam Francis]], [[Richard Diebenkorn]], [[Jules Olitski]], and [[Kenneth Noland]] were of a slightly younger generation, or in the case of [[Morris Louis]] aesthetically aligned with that generation's point of view; that started out as abstract expressionists but quickly moved to post-painterly abstraction. While younger artists like [[Frank Stella]], [[Ronald Davis]], [[Larry Zox]], [[Larry Poons]], [[Walter Darby Bannard]], [[Ronnie Landfield]], [[Dan Christensen]], began with post-painterly abstraction and eventually moved forward towards a new type of expressionism, referred to as [[lyrical abstraction]]. Many of the artists mentioned, as well as many others, have practiced all three modes at one phase of their careers or another. During the later phases of color field painting; as reflections of the [[zeitgeist]] of the late 1960s (in which everything began to ''hang loose'') and the [[angst]] of the age (with all of the uncertainties of the time) merged with the gestalt of [[post-painterly abstraction]], producing [[lyrical abstraction]] which combined precision of the color field idiom with the ''malerische'' of the [[abstract expressionists]]. During the same period of the late 1960s, and early 1970s in Europe, [[Gerhard Richter]], [[Anselm Kiefer]]<ref>"[http://www.whitecube.com/artists/kiefer/ White Cube: Anselm Kiefer]".  White Cube. Retrieved December 15, 2008.</ref> and several other painters also began producing works of intense expression, merging abstraction with images, incorporating landscape imagery, and figuration that by the late 1970s was referred to as [[Neo-expressionism]].