Green 1951

Ellsworth Kelly made this painting, Green, with oil on canvas. It's just green, and it's so great. I can imagine Kelly thinking, what if I just made a painting that was just green? What if I just let the green be green? He probably put the green on with a brush, maybe even a roller, smoothing out the surface to make it just so, but I see evidence of texture. You might think, "Oh, it's just a square, anyone can do that," but it's not just a square, it's Kelly's square, and he did it. He’s in conversation with artists like Barnett Newman who made these monolithic fields of color too. And that green, it’s not just any green, it's Kelly's green. It's kind of earthy and synthetic at the same time. It's a green you can get lost in, like a forest or a dream.