ABSTRACT
While the term "color field" could be, and sometimes has been, validly applied to the expansive paintings of several artists, including Barnett Newman. The designation is more often reserved for a group of Washington, D.C., painters, and above all for Morris Louis and his younger associate, Kenneth Noland. Structure is an element profoundly to be respected, but too open an engagement with it leaves one in the back waters of what are basically Cubist concerns. In the best color painting, structure is nowhere evident, or nowhere self-declaring. The aim of paint surface is appearance—color that appears integral to material surface. Color is of inherent significance in painting. The paint fills in the spaces between the edges, the color areas take on the appearance of overlay. Painting becomes subservient to drawing. When the conception of internal form is governed by edge, color appears to remain on or above the surface.
