Lyrical and Geometric Abstraction
This category can be introduced by a quote from Larry Aldrich, founder of the Aldrich museum in Ridgefield Connecticut. Art from his collection was shown in a traveling exhibition, starting at his museum in 1970, then moving to the Whitney museum in New York. The name of the exhibition was Lyrical Abstraction.
From Aldrich at that time: “Early last season, it became apparent that in painting there was a movement away from the geometric, hard-edge, and minimal, toward more lyrical, sensuous, romantic abstractions in colors which were softer and more vibrant. The artist's touch is always visible in this type of painting, even when the paintings are done with spray guns, sponges or other objects.”
Please look at two paintings from the Aldrich show of 1970. The first, by Pat Lipsky is called Thin Fingers. We see the brush strokes and free-hand painted waves, characteristic of lyrical abstraction.
The second painting by Thornton Willis is called Red Wall, from his Slat series. Notice there are stripes, but they are not uniformly applied as in the Morellet painting we saw earlier. You can see the paint skipping, the under layer showing through, and the texture marks left by a moving roller.
The painting is roughly nine feet square, so to work on it, Willis had the canvas laying flat on the floor where he could use long handled rollers to apply the paint. To prevent the roller from wandering, he must have used some guide device. Even reloading the roller, stoping, and starting could be a challenge. A quick count of about 25 stripes that cover roughly 100 inches tells us his roller must have been about 4 inches wide. He produced a work that has its own special look and the related colors all go well together.
It is worth remarking here that an artist can be at ease working in more than one style, even more so if they are adjacent styles plus separated by decades. As evidence, look at the photo of Willis himself standing, decades later in 2013, next to his geometrically abstract painting called The Ceremony. He was versatile. Some references associate him with at least six art movements.
With that in mind, it is ironic or amusing that some experts claim a suspect artwork couldn’t be by a certain artist because it is not in his style. Perhaps that thinking is valid at times, but needs other supporting evidence. Conversely, a suspect artwork that fits the purported style may do so because the forger wanted the work to look genuine.