Tuesday
Fiery Art Delight
Tate Modern's new Kelly display is in its Level 5 suite entitled Idea and Object: Around Minimalism. Kelly was an anomaly in 1950s American art, but he suddenly became a star in the 1960s because his cool approach to making abstract art seemed to herald the new style critics called "minimalist". In Tate Modern you can see how Kelly's art relates to the 1960s sculpture of Donald Judd, Carl Andre and Dan Flavin. The way Kelly arranges his wooden blocks of colour in Méditerannée anticipates Andre's arrangements of metal plates on the ground. Most of all, he makes you see how minimalism is an art of colour. Flavin's fluorescent lights create rich and emotional displays of colour that are far more baroque than Kelly's reserved pictures. Judd's sculptures frame and contain colour; like alchemists' jars, they hold blocks of blue and red as if these were rare and precious magical substances. This is a man who worships colour so much he has to store it in an industrially fabricated reliquary. If Kelly makes you see the sheer beauty of minimalism - as opposed to the ready-made conceptualism it is so often seen as a dumb vessel of - he also connects contemporary, living art with the heritage of Matisse. This makes him one of the most important artists alive, and Tate Modern should maintain this beautiful display of his work as a permanent exhibit. Standing in front of Kelly's Broadway, as colour moves towards me in a fiery surge, I feel like a newborn child, seeing the world for the first time. Because abstract can't be explained away, it can't be exhausted. It is always new. (Jonathan Jones - The Guardian).
Ellsworth Kelly is one of 21 new displays in the UBS Openings: Tate Modern Collection, London, which opens on May 4. Details: 020-7887 8888. (For full source and article click the Headline).
Irish Art