Portrait of the artist Gene Davis, in Washington D.C.
"I became convinced that the way to make really good art was to do the outrageous, the unexpected — to be a renegade. That was my philosophy — to explore the seemingly impossible in art, to do things that were new for their own sake, whether they were good or bad."
Brightly colored stripes multiply in rhythmic repetitions across the surface of a painting by Gene Davis. Remarkably original when they first appeared in the 1960s, these paintings became the signature expression for one of the leading Color Field painters. With no more than a rectangular canvas and multicolor stripes, Davis created a richly varied body of work that looks as fresh today as it did when it first was shown. The large size of most of his canvases from the 1960s requires a viewer to consider the relationships and rhythms over time, more like a musical composition than the dynamic, colorful, pop art images that emerged at the same time.
In the 1960s, art critics identified Gene Davis as a leader of the Washington Color School, a loosely connected group of Washington painters who created abstract compositions in acrylic colors on unprimed canvas. Their work exemplified what the critic Barbara Rose defined as the 'primacy of color' in abstract painting.
Although Davis's work from the 1960s—mostly hard-edged, equal-width stripe paintings—is generally viewed in the context of the Washington Color School, his goal differed significantly from the other Color School practitioners. Artists like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland generally preferred what Noland called 'oneshot' compositions, mostly symmetrical images that could be comprehended at a glance.
By contrast, Davis experimented with complex schemes that lend themselves to sustained periods of viewing. Davis suggested that "instead of simply glancing at the work, select a specific color—and take the time to see how it operates across the painting.—Enter the painting through the door of a single color, and then you can understand what my painting is all about." In discussing his stripe work, Davis spoke not simply about the importance of color, but about 'color interval:' the rhythmic, almost musical, effects caused by the irregular appearance of colors or shades within a composition.