Tide

Kenneth Noland was an American abstract artist and color field painter. Color field painting is an art style that was popular in the mid-20th century. Color field artists created large washes of colors in their paintings. These paintings did not tell a story. The way the colors looked and interacted with each other was most important to these artists. Noland’s paintings focused on simple shapes like circles, stripes, and chevrons. 

Noland created nearly 200 paintings of concentric circles. He experimented with changing the composition and colors of the circles. A unique feature of Noland’s paintings is the way in which he painted each circle. The innermost circle has a hard, solid edge, and the outermost circle has a rough, “brushy” edge. This draws the viewer’s eye to the inner circle and makes the circles appear to grow and shrink. The composition of Tide was inspired by Josef Albers and his Homage to the Square series of paintings. Albers created thousands of paintings of nested squares in different colors. The squares in Albers’s paintings also appear to expand and contract. 

Noland studied with Albers at Black Mountain College in Western North Carolina. Black Mountain College had a progressive approach to education and focused on giving students a well-rounded arts education. Noland attended Black Mountain College on the G.I. Bill after serving in World War II. The G.I. Bill was a government program designed to help World War II veterans pay for their education and find jobs. 

Other artists who inspired Noland include Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler. Noland painted with his canvas on the floor (like Pollock) and applied paint directly to unprimed canvases (like Frankenthaler).