Sydney Ball was one of the trail blazers of colour-painting in Australia. He studied
under Theodore Stamos at the Art Students League, New York in 1963 and through Stamos
came into contact with members of the New York School including Rothko, de Kooning,
Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler and Lee.Krasner. During this time he saw works by Hans
Hofmann, Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland whose large canvases and strong colour influenced
his work. His first colour abstract paintings named the "Band" Series were exhibited at the
Westerly Gallery uptown 57th St, New York in April 1964. They were of vertical lines of oil
colour on canvas, these bands of colour later in 1964 were housed in a circle within a square
and were the beginning of the "Canto" Series. Using the theme based on Ezra Pound’s poems of
the same title, the circle was used as another vehicle to contain colour and as a mandala
symbol of infinity reflecting Ball’s interest in Eastern philosophy and in particular his Zen beliefs.
Returning to Australia in 1965, Ball continued with the Canto paintings and an exhibition
of these works followed at The Museum of Modern Art, organised by the Director, John Reed.
Success of this series soon followed and after several exhibition’s of the Canto’s the
Persian Series were begun, the curved bands of the works loosely emphasized Islamic Architecture,
as well as the architectural decoration of Persian Miniatures. This group of paintings paraphrasing
Islamic architectural motifs into rhythmically decorative bands of colour were a reductive
"hard edge" process that allowed for the inner and outer spaces to become more "focal" as
images and not merely as flat grounds supporting an image. Victoria Lynn in her introduction
to a survey of Ball’s prints 1964-1988, "A Jubilant Light", writes of the Persian series of prints:
"Ball pushed the border decoration of eastern art into the centre stage as it were. What once framed
a narrative became the compelling subject of the print, emptied of its history." (Sydney Ball, June 1997)
References:
Patrick McCaughey, ‘Sydney Ball and the Sixties’, Art and Australia, vol.7 No 4, 1970;
Victoria Lynn, Sydney Ball: A Jubilant Light, Wollongong Art Gallery, 1989;
Swingtime – East Coast, West Coast Works from the 1960s-70s, The University of Western Australia, Exhibition Catalogue. 1997.
I first met Sydney Ball one freezing November New York day in 1964 in the studio of Theodore Stamos, his teacher and one of the most intuitively lyrical of the abstract expressionists; I was instantly warmed by the radiance of colour in the paintings of Sydney Ball and by the fact that here, amid hard–edge painting, hypnotic optical devices and the bright skeins and veils of Morris Louis colour, was an artist significantly different.
With others he shares optical elements, flatness, purity, uniformity of hue, colour field calmness and mathematical exactness, but Stamos’s cool, quiet canvases,
sometimes of a vast white expanse touched by golden shadows or licked by a red flame, supply a clue to Sydney Ball’s distinctiveness; he is concerned with colour as a sensation of light, not, as are the optical painters, with its retinal effects; his sensuous radiance results from the effects of the light created within the painting rather than from the effects on the eye itself. His work unlike that of the hard-edge and optical painters, is not concerned with the participation of a uniform spectator, but reveals the artist’s creative experience.
This sensuous appeal of felt and experience colour contradicts the parity and makes unstable a seemingly symmetrical equilibrium, that in lesser hands may look so rigid. He is then in the modern tradition of Matisse, Albers, Rothko, Still and Newman with who colour qualifies, rather than opposes, colour and composes a space that is the basis of the emotional appeal. With Sydney Ball,space,however much it pulsate, evokes as he claims, a stillness and a silence,and,I think, a glowing mysticism both remote and immediate.
However much he looks at the commercial landscapes of signs,shopfronts and hoardings, his aim is not to redeem them ,to make them palatable (and what artist ever aimed to do that about an environment except one suborned by an estate agent?);they are relevant to his impressions of the openness of Australia’s natural landscape and the drabness of its colour.His painting like that of Stamos,Still,Rothko and Newman involve paradoxical as it may seem, an organic presence: Commercial signs shout themselves hoarse over one message; the paintings of Sydney Ball come in both coloratura and whispers.
I almost feel like apologising for being so analytical about such rapturous paintings, but must add a last word; the professionalism so evident is not part of a new academic efficiency but is demanded by the refinement of the sensibilities involved in the creation of these cavases..He is a valuable addition to the Australian art scene which he is already exciting and influencing.
Introduction to the catalogue of Canto paintings at the South Yarra Gallery 1966;
By Elwyn Lynn, Sydney.
The Stain paintings followed a sustained colour field period, which included the Band paintings 1963 -1964, the Canto paintings 1964-1967, the Persian series 1967-1968, the Modular constructions 1968-1969 and the Link paintings 1969-1971. The shift to the "action" of the Stain paintings was a continuation of the on-going project of "working the field of colour (sic) and spatial relationships" and a number of American Color Field painters were influential to the development of the Stain paintings including Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Ken Noland and Mark Rothko With the first group of Stain works (1971-1973) the ground was loosened up with the saturation of acrylic paint and daubed sequences of coloured dots. Transparent squares and rectangles were also used as shapes. The introduction of poured enamel areas helped create a surface tension between translucence and opacity. In the second phase (1974-1975) the surface area was "closed off" using layers of acrylic staining and finishing with oil and enamel paint This group of paintings relate closely to Claude Monet’s late series "The House from the Rose Garden", in which the final surface is saturated with rich colour. In the third and final group of Stained works (1976-1981) the surface was opened up again, raw canvas played against poured colour of acrylic paint translucent and solid, accentuated by splashes of enamel colour and subtle nuances which create the rigor of the paintings spatial relationship and structure.
"From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where
I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were,
directed towards me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other
side of the glass. I come back towards myself; I begin again to direct my eyes
towards myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am. The mirror… makes this
place that I occupy at the moment, when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely
real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in
order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there."
Michel Foucault, ‘Of other spaces’, Diacritics 1986;
ABSTRACT ARCHITECTURE
The refinement of Form and Structure and in my paintings the refinement of the vehicle that will contain the colour and maximize the intensity of the work.
This refinement has in turn enabled me to produce architectonic shapes ie.systemizing shapes that are explicatory in their structure while still maintaining a full intensity of colour that works in harmony with the shape.
In exploring the work of architects Mies Van Der Rohe and Zahar Hadid I find that in their own way they have used the refinement of structure to take Architectural design to a new level that simplifies previous design concepts and has in turn created exciting new buildings.
It has been my aim that in creating these shape structures I can achieve a new pictorial architecture that is different and contemporary.
A colour richness and intensity is the primary importance and that is achieved through the refinement of form and colour simplicity.
Sydney Ball 2007.
Colour Field : The subject of the work is colour, and the predominant feature is the deliverance of colour, using vehicles of figure, form, size, shape, line and location to relate colour to colour. The works may appear abstract: of landscapes real, interpreted or imaginary and include figures known or unknown, yet, the primary subject and elements are colour and colour relationships.
The colours we each know are unique to our experiences hence, we must first learn to see them.
Our experiences are then challenged and we must then learn to see new colours and new colour relationships and to express them.
Abstraction : A fact or element without context is an abstraction.
An abstract work combines often disparate elements into a new context within the image, eliminating the unnecessary, juxtaposing elements, highlighting difference and similarity.
In this instance, as a window through which to view the colour relationships
Meaning : The passenger is colour and its relationships,
Meaning is subjugated to the deliverance of colour and its relationships within the work.
Relationship of colour to colour speaks the meaning
The meaning is colour.
Concept : Contains the underlying foundation of the journey, the conveyance, the means and mechanisms that will govern how the exploration travels. Its purpose, to facilitate the exploration of colour and colour relationships
Concepts may be drawn from broad horizons, abstracted and combined as for other element.
Series : The series is a journey as the artist embarks upon a line of development and exploration through a set of elements drawn together within the set of foundation concepts
Development leads, to new areas, new challenges for the artist and audience.
a series is one journey,
Purpose : Adventure, exploration and learning, expression, specialisation and being.
A specific art work is a piece of that journey, a new experience, an artifact uncovered, a documentation of discoveries and a travel photo of sights along the way,
© David May 12/2006