1959, Franz Kline, Black, White, and Gray -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
From the museum label: Composed of broad, sweeping, and luscious strokes, Black, White, and Gray suggests unrestrained artistic spontaneity. Yet Kline's process was quite methodical. He typically began with a sketch, which he projected onto a wall, transforming simple lines into magnified abstract forms, and then replicated in paint. Here, the vertical orientation of the canvas is locked in dynamic tension with numerous horizontals. Kline's gestural black-and-white paintings elicited comparisons to calligraphy. He knew that art form through multiple sources, including the Japanese avant-garde journal Bokubi (Beauty of Ink), but he was quick to distinguish his painting style, asserting in 1958, "I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important."
1959, Franz Kline, Black, White, and Gray -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
From the museum label: Composed of broad, sweeping, and luscious strokes, Black, White, and Gray suggests unrestrained artistic spontaneity. Yet Kline's process was quite methodical. He typically began with a sketch, which he projected onto a wall, transforming simple lines into magnified abstract forms, and then replicated in paint. Here, the vertical orientation of the canvas is locked in dynamic tension with numerous horizontals. Kline's gestural black-and-white paintings elicited comparisons to calligraphy. He knew that art form through multiple sources, including the Japanese avant-garde journal Bokubi (Beauty of Ink), but he was quick to distinguish his painting style, asserting in 1958, "I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important."