Word: goossen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...accompanied by two new books on him. One text, by Artforum Editor John Coplans, is well-nigh impenetrable and reads as though creakily translated from German, though it is relieved by fine color plates (Abrams; $35). The other, the show's catalogue, is by Art Historian Eugene Goossen. It is what museum introductions should be but rarely are-warm and scholarly, steadily focused on Kelly's own experiences and their growth into form, and mercifully free from the imbricated jargon of formalist criticism...
Relief with Blue was, as Goossen points out, a predictive work. Its curves, both supple and spare, would become one of the marks of Kelly's style. The blue "door" in the middle - physically enclosed by the lip of white relief around it - would, in a different way, become another motif. Kelly's mature painting is very much a matter of cut and constriction. Shape burgeons across the canvas, brushing against its edges in such a way that within the bald format there is no dead space. Kelly's paintings are pervaded by a subtly indicated force...