| Hard-edge painting | |
|---|---|
 Lorser Feitelson,Untitled 1952, 40 x 70 inches | |
| Years active | 1950s-present |
| Location | California, United States |
| Major figures | |
Hard-edge painting (also referred to ashard edge orhard-edged) is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas.[1] Color areas often consist of one unvarying color. The style is related togeometric abstraction,op art,post-painterly abstraction, andcolor field.[2]
The term “hard-edge painting” was coined in 1959[3] by writer, curator, andLos Angeles Times art criticJules Langsner, along withPeter Selz, to describe the work of several painters fromCalifornia who adopted a knowingly impersonal paint application and delineated areas of color with particular sharpness and clarity. This style was a significant reaction to the more painterly or gestural forms ofAbstract expressionism, one of the United States’ primary painting movements at the time. The “hard-edge” approach to abstract painting became widespread in the 1960s, though California was its creative center.
Other earlier art movements have also contained the quality of hard-edgedness; for example, thePrecisionists also displayed this quality to a great degree in their work. Hard-edge can be seen to be associated with one or more school of painting, but is also a generally descriptive term, for these qualities found in any painting. Hard-edge painting can be figurative or nonrepresentational.
In the late 1950s, Langsner and Peter Selz, then professor at Pomona College, observed a common link among the recent work ofLorser Feitelson (1898–1978), Feitelson's wifeHelen Lundeberg (1908–1999),John McLaughlin (1898–1976),Frederick Hammersley (1919–2009), andKarl Benjamin (1925-2012). This group of seven gathered at the Feitelson's home to discuss a group exhibition of this nonfigurative painting style. Curated by Langsner,Four Abstract Classicists opened at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1959, then traveled to theLos Angeles County Museum of Art in Exposition Park. Helen Lundeberg was not included in the exhibit.[4]
Four Abstract Classicists was renamedWest Coast Hard-edge by British art critic and curatorLawrence Alloway when it traveled to theInstitute of Contemporary Arts in London, where Alloway was assistant director, andQueen's University in Belfast. The term came into broader use after Alloway used it to describe contemporary American geometric abstract painting featuring "economy of form," "fullness of color," "neatness of surface," and the nonrelational arrangement of forms on the canvas.[5]
In 1964, a second major hard-edge exhibition curated by Jules Langsner, simply titledCalifornia Hard-Edge Painting, was held at the Pavilion Gallery in Balboa, CA (also known as the Newport Pavilion) with the cooperation of the Ankrum Gallery, Esther Robles Gallery, Felix Landau Gallery,Ferus Gallery, and Heritage Gallery ofLos Angeles.[6] Along with Feitselon, Lundeberg, McLaughlin, Hammersley, and Benjamin,California Hard-Edge Painting includedFlorence Arnold,John Barbour,Larry Bell,John Coplans,June Harwood, andDorothy Waldman.
In 2000, Tobey C. Moss curatedFour Abstract Classicists Plus One at her gallery inLos Angeles. The exhibit again featured John McLaughlin, Feitelson, Hammersley, and Benjamin, and added Lundeberg as the fifth of the original Hard-edge painters.[7] In 2003,Louis Stern Fine Arts presented a retrospective exhibition for Lorser Feitelson entitledLorser Feitelson and the invention of Hard-edge painting, 1945–1965.[8] The same year, NOHO MODERN showed the works of June Harwood in an exhibition entitledJune Harwood: Hard-edge painting Revisited, 1959–1969.[9] Art criticDave Hickey solidified the place of these 6 artists inThe Los Angeles School: Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, June Harwood, Helen Lundeberg, and John McLaughlin, an exhibition held at the Ben Maltz Gallery of theOtis Art Institute inLos Angeles in 2004-2005.[10] In 2007-2008, theOrange County Museum of Art exhibitedBirth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury, which included the original "four abstract classicists" along with midcenturydesign,music andfilm.Birth of the Cool traveled nationwide to theAddison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; theOakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA; the Mildred Kemper Lane Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; and theJack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX.[11]
In 2011, the style was featured prominently at theGetty Museum’s initial iteration ofPacific Standard Time, titledCrosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970, which showcased the artistic practices that characterized the postwar L.A. art scene.[12] The exhibition highlighted selections fromLouis Stern Fine Arts including Karl Benjamin’sStage II (1958)[13] and Helen Lundeberg’sBlue Planet (1965).[14]
Louis Stern Fine Arts continues to exhibit and represent the estates of Hard-Edge painters, including Benjamin, Lundeberg, and Feitelson.[15]
This style of hard-edge geometric abstraction recalls the earlier work ofKasimir Malevich,Wassily Kandinsky,Theo van Doesburg, andPiet Mondrian. Aside from Feitelson, Lundeberg, McLaughlin, Hammersley, and Benjamin, other artists associated with Hard-edge painting include:
| Geometric abstraction | |
|---|---|
| Lyrical abstraction | |
| Predecessors | |
