From the early 1960's through the late 1970's the Washington Color School(1, 2) was the dominant Art Movement in Washington DC. It begins with a single exhibit. An encounter which has been mythologized between Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis and Ken Noland. The first exhibit using those terms consisted of 6 artists: Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Tom Downing, Howard Mehring, Gene Davis & Paul Reed.

I began to seriously study art in 1964 and entered the Corcoran School of Art in 1965. Tom Downing was teaching at the Corcoran and was a strong influence on a number of young artists: (Some were attending Art School and some were not.) Carroll Sockwell, Mike Clark, Hillary Hynes.......................... At this point I could only see these paintings as 'flats' against which social interaction occurred. Stage props which had no 'political content' were welcomed in Washington because they gave the politically active a moment of relief from the intensity of their political beliefs. A visual Muzak! (I made a series of drawings with non-objective images in the background and people in the foreground. I was not to understand how important that interplay would be to my work until a few years later. )

Sometime in 1967 or 68 I read in Baudelaire's writings what separated painting from all other media was COLOR. It quickly came to mind that if that was true the "Washington Color School paintings certainly fit Baudelaire's definition. This was an intellectual leap for me. A leap that set me on the road of the FORMALIST possibilities of painting. This was a key that allowed me to think of the Washington Color School works as something other than the "Emperor's New Clothes."

During most of the 20th Century Abstraction has been a key element to the creation and understanding of Art. Some just don't get it, ex; Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word. In his case I believe that it is a political argument rather than a perceptual one. The first book that I read of Wolfe was the "Yellow Candy Tangerine Flaked Baby." In it he speaks of customized cars as an art form but he sees Abstract Expressionism as a fraud hoisted off on the public. I was in the "Picasso Room" at the National Gallery of Art. (Smithsonian-Mellon) Two elderly women were looking at the paintings and the first woman said, "I don't like Picasso's work. Do You?" The second woman responded, "No..I don't either." As they left the room the first woman said, "but I wish I understood him."

Magritte's painting "C'est ne pas une pipe" provides us with a key concept to the understanding of the principles of abstraction in painting. It is not a pipe. It is a painting of a pipe. A very simple, but very important concept.

All Art is abstract. By definition it is not the thing itself it is a representation of a thing or an idea, or it is a record of a moment in time that is defined by the work. Pollock's "Lavender Mist" (National Gallery of Art) is a record of his activities during the moments that the work was created. Gilliam's "April 4" (NMAA) is a similar record. The title draws us to the understanding of its position in time and only if I understand the time line do I understand that the work is a response to the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King.

"In art there are two types of transgression: we will classify these as formal transgression and historical transgression. In the modernist idiom this serves as the backbone of Formalism. Thus the subject matter, but more importantly composition, figure-ground relationships, color, scale, and tactile values are all accepted means of transgressing whatever happens to be considered normal art. Most of the great innovators of the nineteenth and twentieth century--Manet, Courbet, Monet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Rodin, Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian and Pollock--have committed important formal transgressions." {p. 46 The Structure of Art, Jack Burnham, George Braziller, 1971.}

The myth-legend: Morris Louis and Ken Noland go to New York to visit Helen Frankenthaler's studio. The work 'Mountains and Seas' (National Gallery of Art, acquisition #) becomes the basis for the STAINED PAINTINGS that define Washington Color School work.

If one accepts this definition then the Washington Color School is a short lived aberration in painting. My own belief is that Art Movements occur in a larger schema. It is easy to look at a painting and see that it has a dry stained surface. This fits with the heraldic, sign like quality that goes with the Washington Color School. Fast Paintings easily apprehended if not comprehended.

Greenberg becomes the primary evangelist for Color Field Painting. Frank Getlein of the Washington Star is at least cool to if not anti-Washington Color School. Andrew Hudson, Paul Richard and Ben Forgey are the pro-Color School people until they loose interest moving on to other things.

Who benefits and who looses? That is the question that I keep asking myself. If the Washington Color School is defined as the six painters who were in that first exhibit only those 6 artists and those who have an invested interest in their work benefit.

If the definition of the Washington Color School is broadened a large number of Washington Artists reap some benefit from the preservation of that slice of history. (Look at the example of the Impressionist Painters of Paris-today we have a broader view of Impressionism than just the artists who were part of those early Impressionist exhibitions.) The strict definition of the Washington Color School is both sexist and racist. It ignores important art from that same time being created by other Washington Artists working in a similar vein. I don't consider my work directly coming from WCS but it was an influence and a very important one.

Existing communications media now give us as artists the ability to define the relationship of our own work to the body of Art that exists. The artists who were my instructors had a definite influence on me. It was not always an influence to follow their direction. Sometimes it was an influence to go the other way. That is equally an influence

The range of work being done in the early 1970's in Washington was truly amazing. Anne Truitt's Work which was the minimalist-purity side of three dimensional painterly objects, Sam Gilliam's suspended paintings (by contrast they are almost baroque in sensibility,) Rockne Kreb's transparent sculptures, light & laser works, Ed McGowin's vacum formed pieces which he was ending and moving towards a more personal art (tableaus,) Bill Christenberry's neon works which lead him to deal more directly with his roots, Bob Stackhouse, Tom Green, Mary Beth Edelson, Cynthia Bickley, Carmen Almon, Ken Young...(my own foam "pieces," a youthful explosion!)

It is time to look at the Art of Washington & Washington Color School in a new context as well as a broader context. The work has some unifying conceptual elements and some very different applications and intentions. The group of artists that I would associate being influenced by the conceptual base of Color Painting range from Reduco-polymorphic Chromists to Anti-Chromists. There are imagist chromists and anti-imagist chromists. There are the rabidly 2-D Chromists and the multidimensional chromists. Donald Corrigan did an "evaluation" of Washington artists in an exhibition of his. I thought it rather silly at the time but in retrospect a clearer definition of the various "schools of thought" about Art in DC makes sense.

I think of that time in Washington as being a lively creative period similar to Paris at the turn of the last century. Three things were there to make the artist and movements grow. Creative artists, critical writing & a market to support the artists.

MANIFESTO 2100