"As usual, your paintings continue to haunt.mes . But [for the] first t.mes I felt they were beyond my eye for [the] t.mes being. Which, for me, means everything."
A vision of sumptuous, striated color, Number 4-31 is a paragon of Morris Louis’s iconic Stripe paintings, a highly lauded body of work produced by the artist from early 1961 until his unt.mes ly death the following year. One of the last vertical stripe paintings made before Louis’s death in 1962, Number 4-31 is a commanding example of an artist at the height of his production, flawlessly synthesizing color and form into a sweeping and hypnotic image. Louis creates a euphoric and harmonious concatenation of pigment, dexterously balancing warm and cool tones in saturated bands of color that stretch the length of the canvas and culminate in defined peaks, a record of Louis’ impressive experimental process. Measuring 82 by 58 inches, Number 4-31 is amongst the largest scale of vertical Stripe paintings produced by Louis, belonging to a rarified group of this series executed at a wider proportion. Despite the rarity of vertical stripe paintings of this scale, paintings of a similar breadth to Number 4-31 make up close to half of Louis’s vertical stripe paintings present in major institutions around the world, a test.mes nt to the tremendous significance of this painting within Louis’s oeuvre.
Morris Louis's Wide Vertical Stripe Paintings in Prominent Institutional collects ions
Number 4-31 was acquired in October 1968 by William S. Paley, one of the most forward-thinking, generous, and influential collects ors of the Twentieth Century who played a key role in the development of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Beginning in 1937, Paley was instrumental in defining an institution established only 8 years earlier, and over the next five decades he would take on major roles within the organization including trustee, president, and chairman. Today, many of the museum’s most treasured works are those donated from Paley’s collects ion, including Picasso's Boy Leading a Horse (1905-06) and The Architect’s Table (1912), Cézanne’s L’Estaque (1882-83), and Redon’s Vase of Flowers (circa 1912-14).
Arranging tones of rich ochre, tangerine, and mulberry alongside brilliant jade and cerulean, Louis orchestrates an alluring prismatic harmony. The present work’s earthen tones swim alongside flushes of glowing color, propelled upwards by vertical momentum. Ten vibrant and saturated bands of pigment race up the canvas in symMetricas l rivulets “like capillary tubes carrying up moisture from their roots” (John Elderfield in Exh. Cat., Morris Louis, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1986, p. 75). The bands of color vibrate in contrast and pool together into a prismatic pillar, producing an expansive and balanced field of resplendent color made even more impressive by the painting’s substantial proportions. “Louis’s choices of color (hue and tonality) and his handling of color (of its relative tactility) were designed not only to visually combine the stripes,” expounds curator John Elderfield, “but to preserve their identities within that combination.” (John Elderfield in Exh. Cat., Morris Louis, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1986, p. 75) Number 4-31 articulates the fundamental precepts of Louis’s remarkable career, masterfully illustrating the artists’ desire to ennoble color to an individual force unto itself.
Though incredibly fluid, the border between each band of hue in Number 4-31 is clearly articulated and contoured, with Louis maintaining equal intensity and vibrancy along their lengths. The stripes in Number 4-31 are a product of extensive experimentation that culminated in a technique of carefully pouring and guiding paint in flowing linear rivulets. Louis’s technique was so precise that he “could control the flow so that neighboring rivulets do not touch at any point along their trajectories, even when the margin separating them measures an inch or less” praises Diane Upright, and in moments where permeation between colors was permitted, “they impart subtle spatial inflections” (Diane Upright in Morris Louis: The Completed Paintings Catalogue Raisonné, New York, Harry N. Abrams Publisher, 1985, p.57) Number 4-31’s vivid strokes crown in defined peaks near the top of the painting, a record of the artist’s tactile process and further test.mes nt to Louis’s impressive control of paint. The brilliant ribbons of flowing pigment evoke Louis’s active presence, drawing together artist, viewer, and image in a compelling meditation on painting itself.
"Louis’s choices of color (hue and tonality) and his handling of color (of its relative tactility) were designed not only to visually combine the stripes, but to preserve their identities within that combination.”
Louis’s Stripe paintings are characterized by an inextricable link between paint and support; rather than placing paint on top of the canvas, the artist fuses pigment and canvas into a single prismatic plane and creates an image that is both intimate and incredibly powerful. Louis traces the origin of the groundbreaking paintings like Number 4-31 to a visit to Helen Frankenthaler’s studio in New York with his friend and fellow painter Kenneth Noland, who he met as an instructor at the Washington Workshop Center of the Arts in 1952. Noland introduced Louis to Clement Greenberg, the preeminent theorist and art critic, and in 1953 the three men took a trip to Helen Frankenthaler’s studio. Here Louis witnessed Frankenthaler signature soak-stain technique in which the artist poured diluted paint onto raw canvas. Struck by the blend of depth and flatness in the ethereal pools of color, Louis saw Frankenthaler’s experimentations as “a bridge between Pollock and what was possible” and was inspired to move beyond gestural representation, cultivating his own unique artistic vernacular that would reach its pinnacle in the Stripe paintings completed just before his death (John Elderfield in Exh. Cat., Morris Louis, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1986, p. 75) Upon viewing Louis’s Stripe paintings for the first t.mes , Greenberg wrote to the artist saying, “as usual, your paintings continue to haunt.mes . But [for the] first t.mes I felt they were beyond my eye for [the] t.mes being. Which, for me, means everything” (Clement Greenberg, “Letter to Morris Louis”, Morris Louis Archives, 23 March 1962)
Marrying pictorial splendor with a newfound sense of control, Number 4-31 displays the refined technique of a master colorist, who by this t.mes in his career had perfected a staggering array of sophisticated arrangements. Distinguished not only for its chromatic intricacy but for its significant scale and composition, Number 4-31 is a defining contribution to Morris Louis’s groundbreaking Stripe paintings and typifies Louis’s extraordinary exploration and mastery of the painterly medium.
