Untitled

Artist Sam Francis (1923 - 1994)

Date1973

Mediumetching and aquatint on paper

DimensionsFrame: 27 x 37 in. (68.6 x 94 cm) Paper: 25 1/4 x 35 1/4 in. (64.1 x 89.5 cm) Image: 15 3/4 x 17 3/4 in. (40 x 45.1 cm)

SignedSam Francis

Credit LineGift of Barbara B. Millhouse

Object number1983.2.24

DescriptionMost people think of Sam Francis as a great colorist; toward the end of his life, a strident, brilliant blue was his favorite color. But he also valued white, and many of his color field paintings have broad expanses of white with color hovering around the edges. And black—the opposite of white—was also something he favored. He completed a series called Black Drawings, which he kept stored for years in his Tokyo studio. Telling a colleague about them, he said, “They’re very special. Very dark. Black drawings. You know, things that I haven’t shown much, and that people don’t know very well, and don’t understand. They’re very personal and important to me.” [1]

Untitled, too, is “very dark.” On a sheet of thick Fabriano paper, heavy black swaths enframe a virtually empty center. The image is almost square. Two of these bold shapes are vertical, slightly tilted to the left, and are intercepted by a strong horizontal. Delicate threads of ink also connect the verticals. The lower left and upper right corners are filled with black shapes. Scattered throughout are small round black spots, which enliven a speckled field made by the aquatint. The composition lacks specific orientation, and negative and positive shapes are evenly balanced.

Francis was not the only artist of the era to use black in an expressive and personal way. Such giants of Abstract Expressionism as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Clyfford Still consistently used black, sometimes without other colors. Francis called black “the satanic color from which light emerges, often unexpectedly.” [2] In his untitled etching, he allows light to emanate from the center by concentrating and focusing the viewer’s gaze. There is also something calligraphic about the bands of black, which he created by swift gestures as he worked the plate. The fact that his Black Drawings remained in storage in Tokyo may be an indirect and subconscious homage to Japanese calligraphy.

Notes:
[1] Francis quoted in Robert Shapazian, “Working in the Dark,” in Martin Sosin, Sam Francis: Color is the Essence of It All (Santa Monica, CA: Martin Sosin, 2003), 1.
[2] Francis quoted in Peter Selz, Sam Francis (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1975), 46.
ProvenanceTo 1983
Barbara B. Millhouse, New York, NY and Winston-Salem, NC. [1]

From 1983
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Barbara B. Millhouse on December 29, 1983. [2]

Notes:
[1] Deed of Gift, object file.
[2] See note 1.
Exhibition History1976
Twentieth Century American Print Collection opening
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/1976)

2007
Abstract/Object
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (2/27/2007-6/17/2007)
Published ReferencesReynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 192, 193

Status

Not on view