During the 1960s and in response to the performative gestures of Abstract Expressionism, American artist Kenneth Noland pioneered a new geometric abstraction that prioritized the relationship between colors. Across Center (1965) is a 6-meter-long painting comprised of four distinct bands in complimentary tones of red, pink, brown, and green which extend the full length of the canvas. While attending Black Mountain College, the experimental American art school in North Carolina, Noland encountered the principles of Bauhaus directly from Josef Albers while also looking to the geometric compositions of Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee.[1] While American artists like Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler had removed the process of painting from stretcher bars, relieving themselves from a fixed format and scale, Noland conceptually developed their ideas towards a focus on color alignment and opacity. Noland recalled, "the stripes were horizontal and that was a very abstract kind of way of putting colors down. It's probably the most removed from any kind of associations with any external imagery… the lines are non-descriptive."[2] While the wide span of Across Center is evocative of the horizon, sunrise and sunset, and film strips, any such correlations are subjective and for the viewer to determine.

[2] Noland quoted in “Oral history interview with Kenneth Noland, 1987 July 1-16.” Archives of American Art. Accessed online: https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-kenneth-noland-12192