One of the first works from Ed Clark’s important Vétheuil series, ‘Untitled (Vétheuil)’ (1967) represents both a pivotal moment in the artist’s oeuvre, as well as a key location in the history of art. Clark created the extraordinary series while working in his friend Joan Mitchell’s studio in the village of Vétheuil, an area that also inspired some of Claude Monet’s most celebrated paintings. The colors of Vétheuil had an immediate impact on Clark’s palette and the light he so evocatively conjured in his paintings. Painted flat on the floor with a large broom originally purchased at Monoprix in Paris, ‘Untitled (Vétheuil)’ is a consummate example of Clark’s pioneering ‘big sweep’ technique. Clark’s innovative application of paint with a push broom produced a sense of drive across the canvas, extending the momentum of his gesture across the entire surface and bestowing the composition its extraordinary dynamic quality.
About the artist
Born in New Orleans in 1926 and raised in Chicago, Ed Clark emerged in the 1950s as a pioneer of the New York School. His advancements have an important place in the story of modern and contemporary art: in the late 1950s he was the first American artist credited with exhibiting a shaped canvas, an innovation that continues to reverberate today. His search for a means to breach the limitations of the conventional paintbrush led him to use a push broom to apply pigment to a canvas laid out on the floor. Defying the discrete categories of gestural and hard-edged abstraction, Clark masterfully interwove these approaches into a unique form of expressionism.
Artwork images © The Estate of Ed Clark. Photos: Thomas Barratt
Portrait of Ed Clark © The Estate of Ed Clark. Photo: Chester Higgins Jr / The New York Times / Redux