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Kenneth Victor Young Untitled 1970

Kenneth Victor Young’s Untitled features the artist’s characteristic combination of hand-painted orbs and graceful, free-flowing plumes of airy, bright color. Like Morris Louis and other artists of the Washington Color School, Young placed his unstretched, unprimed canvases on the ground or on slanted tables and used gravity to manipulate diluted acrylic paint poured directly on the surface. Known as “stain painting,” this process requires considerable skill and practice to control. Young is notable for having constantly experimented with new tools and techniques, employing sponges and spray bottles as well as “old-fashioned” paintbrushes. His compositions recall both biological and celestial imagery—offering what appears to be a microscopic look at tiny organisms in a petri dish simultaneously with a macroscopic glimpse of the cosmos. Young’s background as a trained chemist and physicist supports this reading. In the artist’s words, his work is “born out of the desire to find unity in this chaotic existence, of which I am a part.” 
Identification
Title
Untitled
Production Date
1970
Object Number
2020.212
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, museum purchase with funds provided by PAMM’s Collectors Council
Copyright
© Kenneth Victor Young
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions
Canvas: 60 x 59 inches
Visual Description
Untitled by Kenneth Victor Young is a painting from 1970. It is made of acrylic paint on canvas and measures roughly five feet by five 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 comprised of a large squared section of paint that is composed mostly of intersecting and layered groups of many small circles of solid purple, black and blue paint. The paint circles bleed into each other, creating an almost watercolor-like effect. The painted section seems to hover over the exposed canvas around a rough border of paint. The edges of the large squared paint section are uneven, and give the impression of moving water or seeping ink. The circles begin on the outer edges and appear blurry and gain clarity as they reach the center of the canvas. The base layer of circles that blend together into the large square are mostly a deep purple, with some traces of pink and sky blue. Above them is a layer of dots that are painted black. The dense black dots above the purple and blue backdrop create a sense of movement and vibration. The black dots in many ways resemble tadpoles in an inky, dark pond.
Kenneth Victor Young
Kenneth Victor Young — b. 1933, Louisville, Kentucky; d. 2017, Washington, D.C.
Artist Page