The Yellow X

1965

American, 1928 - 2005

Al Held’s impressive two-panel painting The Yellow X is one of his seminal “Letter Paintings” from the early 1960s. In the late 1940s in New York, Held took classes at the Art Students League before enrolling at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris. This exposure to both American and European painting in mid-century introduced Held to different visions of abstraction. On the one hand, he became familiar with neo-concretist forms of abstraction in Europe, indebted to the legacies of geometric abstraction; on the other, in New York, he was surrounded by diverse experiments of gestural abstraction. Influences of both persuasions were palpable in his work in the late 1950s before he embarked on a bold new direction with his “Letter Paintings” in the early 1960s.
The Yellow X is part of this new group of paintings in which single letters push against the borders of his images. Due to the large scale and slight tilt, the letter X registers initially as a bold abstract form. The triangular wedges of irregular size pierce the painting from all sides and read alternately as abstract forms on a yellow ground or as the background that provide a glimpse into a warped perspective space. Thickly painted in acrylic, the painting style accentuates the architectonic scale of the letter X. It is with this and related works that Held made important contributions to what became known as Hard Edge painting, an area in which Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly also made their mark.
The Yellow X demonstrates the invention of a new pictorial space that contends with the legacies of both European and American abstraction. In addition, the painting resonates with important three-dimensional works from this period, notably Robert Morris’s large format geometric installations from the mid-1960s.

Acrylic on canvas

144 1/2 × 178 in. (367 × 452.1cm)

Gift of Virginia and Bagley Wright

2013.11

Provenance: The artist; [Al Held Foundation, Inc., New York]; Private Collection, New York; [Cheim & Read, New York]; purchased from gallery by Virginia Wright, Seattle, April 25, 2013

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistoryBasel, Switzerland, Kunsthalle Basel, “Held Kelly Mattmuller Noland Olitski Pfahler Plumb Turnbull”, June 26 – September 5, 1965.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Stedelijk Museum, “Al Held”, March 25 – May 1, 1966.

San Francisco, California, San Francisco Museum of Art, “Al Held”, January 9 – February 25, 1968.

Washington D.C., the Corcoran Gallery of Art, “Al Held”, March 16 – April 21, 1968.

New York, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, “Al Held”, October 11 – December 1, 1974.

Published ReferencesYau, John. "The Connoisseurship of Al Held." Hyperallergic.com. N.p., 17 Mar. 2013. Web. 30 May 2014.

Rhodes, David. "Al Held Alphabet Paintings." The Brooklyn Rail. N.p., Apr. 2013. Web. 30 May 2014.

Beeren, W. A. L. “Al Held.” Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1966. Unpaginated, illustrated.

Rose, Barbara and Irving Sandler. “Sensibility of the Sixties.” Art in America, January – February, 1967. P.53 (illustrated).

Shirey, David L. “The Great Walls.” Newsweek, January 29, 1968. P.83 (illustrated).

Getlein, Frank. “Art: Corcoran Still in the Big Picture.” Washington Evening Star, March 17, 1968. Page unknown, illustrated.

Green, Eleanor. “Al Held.” San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art, 1968. P. 17 (Illustrated).

Touster, Irwin. “Al Held.” Woodstock Times, November 7, 1974. Page unknown, illustrated.

Tucker, Marcia. “Al Held.” New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974. P.50 (illustrated).

Irving, Sandler. “Al Held.” New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1984. P.59 (illustrated).

Armstrong, Richard. “Al Held.” New York: Rizzoli International Publications Inc., 1991. P. 15, plate 26.

Humblet, Claudine. “The New American Abstraction: 1950 – 1970.” Milan: Skira, 2007. P.774 (illustrated).

Storr, Robert. “Al Held Alphabet Paintings.” New York: Cheim & Read, 2013. Unpaginated, illustrated.

Johnson, Ken. “Al Held, ‘Alphabet Paintings’.” The New York Times, Weekend Arts, Section C, March 22, 2013. P.C27 (illustrated).

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