 Art Ramp Angle Brown 1978 |
Sam Gilliam has figured prominently among African-American artists committed to abstract art since the early 1960's. Exploring color as the basis of painting, he has also been closely identified with Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and other Color Field painters in Washington, D.C., where he has lived after 1962.
Since 1968 Gilliam has draped monumental canvases on floors and walls or suspended them from ceilings. Art Ramp Angle Brown was originally conceived as a vertical rectangle to be bunched, draped, and angled on an exterior wall in a temporary outdoor installation. The title describes its location, shape, and dominant color, while its structure defies the rigid geometric configuration of conventionally stretched canvases. |
Gilliam arranged overlapping panels of awning fabric within Art Ramp Angle Brown to create an open grid through which wind could pass when the painting was hung outdoors. Over the alternating solid colors and stripes of the panels he poured and brushed paint. His spontaneous, energetic gestures created splashes, strokes, and heavily layered areas that reveal his admiration for Abstract Expressionist painting.
Now hanging in a museum, Art Ramp Angle Brown has assumed a different configuration. Like the artist's other unstretched canvases, its arrangement is altered during every installation; for one hanging, Gilliam added a length of string. No longer seen from a distance or moving with the wind, the painting offers glimpses of its internal structure and two-sided passages of color. Gilliam's improvisational techniques and Expressionist use
of color distinguish his paintings from the cool, elegant works often associated with Washington's abstract artists.Text from African American Art 19 & 20th-Century Selections,
National Museum of American Art