Kelly Draws, a Wild Hand

"I want to take the I out of my paintings," declares Ellsworth Kelly.

"I as in the pronoun, not e-y-e, eye," interjects Harry Cooper, Associate Curator of Modern Art.

Without that almost clairvoyant amendment by Cooper, we would be left with a very different impression of the modernist Ellsworth Kelly. By his own unabashed admission, Kelly is "minimalist," a title which suggests that his work could be seen as being overly impersonal. But this "immense detachment," as Cooper calls it, is impersonal in the sense of modesty, not purposeful indifference.

And certainly, to take Kelly's eye out of his paintings would be to inflict death upon the very soul of his work--"I'm very interested in the measure of color (form and line as well)...color changes so subtly." For Kelly, the world is just "a bunch of fragmentation," a space defined thoroughly by perception. He has trained his eyes to detect the slices of everyday life that might elude other. At age 12, Kelly remembers walking by a window, a ready-made frame, which enclosed what appeared to him to be three colored, abstracted shapes. Intrigued, he approached the window, only to discover a red couch, blue curtains and by all judgments an ordinary living room. Perplexed, he backed away slowly until the abstractions were seen again. Listening to Kelly relate this story, so touching in its nostalgic sincerity, was perhaps the best verbal testimony of his artistic integrity.

Ellsworth Kelly: The Early Drawings, featuring 220 drawings and collages, seeks to trace Kelly's formative years in France as a young artist searching not for self but for non-self. As Yve-Alain Bois, Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Professor of Modern Art, points out "the grail he (Kelly) sought was his own effacement." During the period of 1948-1955, Kelly sought to find a way not to compose, to relinquish personal agency over his work. The exhibit, arranged chronologically, depicts three methods: the direct copy or transfer system, automatic drawings, and grid work established by chance.

One of the most surprising works of the exhibit is 1949's Study for Seaweed (number 19 in the exhibition), a direct transfer of the outlines of a seaweed plant pinned to the door of Kelly's Bellelle cottage. At first sight, especially due to its placement near some of Kelly's transfers of window frames, one might mistake Study for Seaweed for window glass being broken by the intrusive head of a nail or perhaps the artist's pencil. In fact, it is sometimes extremely difficult to discern the content of these paintings. But that is not the point. You see, Kelly added the descriptive names to these works as an afterthought years later.

If ever you were under the opinion that it is Kelly's insufficient drawing skills that lead to his love for minimalism, then his automatic drawings should destroy and completely bury that notion. Automatic drawing is a technique in which the artist attempts to relinquish control over his hand. Coat Hangers VI (pictured on page 8), although in reductive terms just a "bunch of random lines," shows a tremendous intuitive sensitivity to line and form--it yearns to come alive. This is also evident in Automatic Drawing: Pine Branches (number 68-73), where the dozen or so lines he draws seem to suggest the form better than even the real thing.

By 1951, Kelly opted for more color. He fortuitously discovered papier gommette, colored construction paper with a nice shiny coat used by French school-children. Intent on discovering the mysteries of the color spectrum and in particular "what colors go well together," he attempted to rely on chance to shuffle his colors. In Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance (numbers 110-114), Kelly relates how he painstakingly divided his background into a grid of tiny squares and then randomly drew and assigned colors out of a hat for each square. "I'll never do that again!" he jokes.

However, Kelly did continue to use the same gummed paper for less tedious color work. The Nine Colors series of 1953-1954 (numbers 159-67) inspired his recent installation at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in downtown Boston. When I asked him if he realized that the B-1

main mural (nine linoleum-smooth color slabstiled three-by-three), when viewed from thedifferent floors, actually appeared to not onlyshine with a soft radiance, but with a certainmagic? Was this a subtlety he had expected? Kellyreplied only with a quizzical look and promptlybegan telling the story of how he, a man of morecolors than words, convinced the judges (who wereactually real U.S. Justices) to choose hisinstallment over the other final entries. As theystood in front of the nine color panels, Kelly wasasked if there was any meaning to his choice ofcolors. In an unexpected incident of repartee,Kelly replied: "You see that black panel in thecenter, well, that's you Judge! I want everycriminal to understand the severity of thiscourthouse, of what it means to be here." TheJudge then interjected, "But the criminals come upthe back staircase, they won't be able to see yourwork," an almost superfluous addendum. It wasobvious that the Judge, like many of us, hadalready been won over by those magical colors ofEllsworth Kelly

main mural (nine linoleum-smooth color slabstiled three-by-three), when viewed from thedifferent floors, actually appeared to not onlyshine with a soft radiance, but with a certainmagic? Was this a subtlety he had expected? Kellyreplied only with a quizzical look and promptlybegan telling the story of how he, a man of morecolors than words, convinced the judges (who wereactually real U.S. Justices) to choose hisinstallment over the other final entries. As theystood in front of the nine color panels, Kelly wasasked if there was any meaning to his choice ofcolors. In an unexpected incident of repartee,Kelly replied: "You see that black panel in thecenter, well, that's you Judge! I want everycriminal to understand the severity of thiscourthouse, of what it means to be here." TheJudge then interjected, "But the criminals come upthe back staircase, they won't be able to see yourwork," an almost superfluous addendum. It wasobvious that the Judge, like many of us, hadalready been won over by those magical colors ofEllsworth Kelly