1. artcatssummer:

The Golden Wall, 1961. Oil on canvas, Hans Hoffman.  
Hoffman’s late painting (from 1958 to 1966) centered on a defined opposition between hard geometry and painterliness, as in The Golden Wall. Some late works include only loose gestures or precise, geometric forms.  Most, however, involve a new synthesis of, on one hand, the fauvist palette and the Cezanne-inspired structural rationality of the late-thirties landscapes with, on the other hand, Kandinsky’s free brushwork and his romantic spatial organization.  These paintings reflect the precision of Hofmann’s analysis of color relationships and their structural implications.  
With the rectangles, which dominate Hofmann’s compositions by 1958, the artist leads the viewer around the space in a processional way, as in a plan for a classical building.  The viewer discovers the spaces through these defining forms.  Mondrian’s writings on the contrast of rectangles to other forms helped Hofmann refine one aspect of this language, and the picturesque complexity of Kandinsky’s spatial systems informed another. Hoffman’s distinction between shifting and overlapping rectangles - both retreating and advancing in space - is a subtlety that grew out of his concept of “push and pull.”

    artcatssummer:

    The Golden Wall, 1961. Oil on canvas, Hans Hoffman.  

    Hoffman’s late painting (from 1958 to 1966) centered on a defined opposition between hard geometry and painterliness, as in The Golden Wall. Some late works include only loose gestures or precise, geometric forms.  Most, however, involve a new synthesis of, on one hand, the fauvist palette and the Cezanne-inspired structural rationality of the late-thirties landscapes with, on the other hand, Kandinsky’s free brushwork and his romantic spatial organization.  These paintings reflect the precision of Hofmann’s analysis of color relationships and their structural implications.  

    With the rectangles, which dominate Hofmann’s compositions by 1958, the artist leads the viewer around the space in a processional way, as in a plan for a classical building.  The viewer discovers the spaces through these defining forms.  Mondrian’s writings on the contrast of rectangles to other forms helped Hofmann refine one aspect of this language, and the picturesque complexity of Kandinsky’s spatial systems informed another. Hoffman’s distinction between shifting and overlapping rectangles - both retreating and advancing in space - is a subtlety that grew out of his concept of “push and pull.”

  2. ryan gosling + david hockney = things that i love and approve of greatly

    ryan gosling + david hockney = things that i love and approve of greatly

  3. cavetocanvas:

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement In Blue And Silver: The Great Sea, c. 1885

    cavetocanvas:

    James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement In Blue And Silver: The Great Sea, c. 1885

  4. cavetocanvas:

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Design For A Mosaic, 1888-91

    cavetocanvas:

    James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Design For A Mosaic, 1888-91

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