Al Held Solar Wind I 1973–74
© 2022 Al Held Foundation, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
While initially engaged with gestural painting influenced by Abstract Expressionism, Al Held began to incorporate solid, geometric forms into his painting in the 1960s. In 1967, looking to specifically generate a greater sense of structure and space in his compositions, he began to work exclusively in black and white, creating geometric paintings that referenced architectural drawings and engineering diagrams.
Solar Wind I, a large painting from that period, incorporates disjunctive graphic elements that create unusual spatial effects. An angled grid of thick lines is contrasted with thinly drawn arcs and triangles in a manner that suggests various perspectives and a layering of these forms. Lines appear to extend beyond the frame of the painting, creating an additional sense of depth and movement in the work.
Identification
Title
Solar Wind I
Production Date
1973–74
Object Number
1994.1
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Robert Miller and Betsy Wittenborn Miller in honor of David Lawrence, Jr.
Copyright
© 2022 Al Held Foundation, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
https://www.pamm.org/en/artwork/1994.1
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions
114 x 114 inches
Visual Description
Solar Wind I by Al Held is a painting made between 1973 and 1974. It is made out of acrylic paint on canvas and measures nine-and-a half feet by nine-and-a half feet.
This painting is an example of an abstraction, which is a style of painting that focuses on the gestural movement of shapes and colors rather than depicting scenes or figures.
The painting is monochromatic, meaning it uses a color palette limited to one color. The entire canvas is white and the intersecting black wireframe outlines of cubes, rectangles, lines, and dots that occupy the composition. The painting features a large cube with bold lines that takes up the majority of the large square canvas. The painting uses multiple vanishing points to create the illusion of depth. The parallel lines of the flat-painted objects make them appear as large floating white polygons. The large cube is in fact a large square with its “depth” implied by lines painted at forty-five-degree angles at its corners. The cube is surrounded and impaled by smaller cuboids, rectangular prisms, and pyramids painted with thinner black lines. Around the perimeter of this larger cube there are small black dots scattered about.
