Modern and Contemporary Art

Note

Paul Jenkins began manipulating paint in a novel way on canvases as early as 1953, controlling the flow of his medium to achieve the desired forms. Moving from oil to acrylic around 1960, Jenkins started titling his works beginning with Phenomena and adding subsequent words, depending on what the painting told him it wanted to be called. Phenomena was based on Goethe's color theory and Jenkins' reading of Kant, and his feeling that paintings do not represent something in the physical world, but rather are something in the world themselves. He once said that a painting "takes on its own metaphor and meaning."

As he described his process, the Phenomena paintings were not poured on unprimed canvas as a way of staining or soaking, but rather he began with primed canvases and guided the paint along with an ivory knife, controlling the flow and identifying forms as he worked. These paintings exemplify his life-long endeavor to paint light: "I have tried to achieve a kind of form in its own discovered space, a kind of light which reveals itself from within, while the reflected element affirms from without" [Albert E. Elsen, Paul Jenkins, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1973]. The present lot is subtitled Gorges sur Loup, an exquisitely beautiful area in the Côte d’Azur region of France, known for its gorges and stunning waterfalls, evoked in the blue cascade of the paint here.