Farnsworth exhibit hails color as king Kenneth Noland’s art on display in Rockland

Kenneth Noland: “Themes and Variations, 1958-2002,” through Oct. 13 at the Farnsworth Art Museum, Main Street, Rockland. 596-6457.

Walking into the Kenneth Noland exhibit at the Farnsworth is like getting a 64-pack of Crayola crayons for the first time.

There’s a feeling of excitement that transcends the act of cracking the top off the green and yellow cardboard box and finding colors with names such as periwinkle, hot magenta, mulberry and sea green inside. The excitement lies in the colors themselves, the possibilities they hold, the anticipation of experimenting with the hues.

Noland, a leader in the development of color-field painting, made a career out of that experimentation. It started in the early 1950s in Washington, D.C., where he “stained” bare canvases with thinned synthetic polymer paint. Later, he played with the texture and luminosity of his surfaces, imparting a more painterly quality to his work. The retrospective at the Farnsworth charts this evolution in an engaging, logical format.

Noland is a direct descendant of the Fauves, specifically Matisse, who used jarring color juxtapositions, yet clung to the representational format. Noland broke free of representation. Rather than using color as a means to an end, he uses color as both the means and the end.

There is no larger meaning, no intellectualization, no commentary. He paints for color’s sake, and his work is a celebration of the purely formal aspects of painting. Though his circles, diamonds, twin-bed-size rectangles and oddly shaped works look highly abstract, they’re not. What you see is what you get.

“I think of painting without subject matter as music without words,” he once told an interviewer. “It affects our innermost being as space, spaces, air.”

His brilliant painting of aquamarine, violet, chartreuse, melon and rose stripes looks like summer – a beach blanket, an awning, a chaise longue. A nearby striped canvas looks like a Martha Stewart paint sample card – subtle taupes and Coke-bottle greens tastefully complement each other.

Noland started with circles and vees of color, branched off into asymmetrical canvases, striped rectangles, richly textured chevrons, and later returned to circles. The early, “stained” rings of color seem flat when paired against the circles in his latest series, “Mysteries,” which look like neon targets. Painted in his new home of Port Clyde, they aim to capture Maine’s unique light.

On his canvases, the light is clear, pure, almost electric. The later circles resemble the moon when it has a halo. On one, an intricately worked turquoise sphere is ringed by strips of cantaloupe and crimson, then a final, glowing, almost penumbral ring of cantaloupe. The whole image floats against a deeper blue background. Metallic paints and manipulation of flat colors give these stark compositions depth.

It’s OK to like these paintings just because you like the colors. There’s nothing to figure out, you’re not missing anything, and that’s extremely freeing. It lets you get lost in Noland’s large, bright canvases.

Maine College of Art Summer Faculty Exhibition, through Sept. 1 at Elements Gallery, Main Street, Rockland. 596-6010.

A watermelon ukulele? A briefcase full of paper dentures? You call this art?

Absolutely. With tongue firmly in cheek.

This year’s Maine College of Art faculty show, at Elements Gallery in Rockland, is full of surprises – some whimsical, some bizarre, all absorbing. It’s a broader range of work than in years past, with earthy ceramics, furniture and sound pieces in addition to paintings and drawings.

Among the highlights are Joel Eckhaus’ painted ukuleles, including one from a series of song-influenced pieces titled “My Blue Heaven,” adorned with a depiction of the song’s lyrics. Eckhaus, who crafts and sells acoustic and electric guitars, pokes fun at the humble ukulele, but each instrument is fully functional. One is a miniature take on the Fender Stratocaster, complete with a plug for an amplifier.

Works by Gail Spaien, Lisa Whelan and Sean Foley will look familiar to anyone who saw last summer’s faculty exhibition, but the work has changed subtly. Whelan is still working with a palette of marine blue and greenish ochre, but her paintings are a bit more abstract this year. Her previous work had concrete references to land, sea and sky, but these stray a bit, with a stray green cube or a strip of indigo leaving the viewer wondering whether these are, in fact, landscapes or something more.

Foley’s work looks cartoonish from afar, but a closer examination reveals organic shapes and subtle shading that reference key figures in art history – Gustave Klimt, Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso, to name a few. Spaien’s small canvases, on the other hand, are firmly rooted in women’s history, specifically the history of “women’s work.” Pieces from her “Counting and Sewing” series draw their imagery from quilt patterns and abacus beads. Spaien uses soft tones that bring to mind faded photographs.

Tracey Cockrell’s sound-infused works appeal to the viewer (and listener) on several levels. Her “Nocturne: Wind over Water” gives a whole new meaning to “feather pillow.” The work is a pillow-shaped mass, covered with luminous blue feathers and emitting the sound of waves crashing in a similar rhythm to snoring. When you open Cockrell’s bird’s eye maple briefcase, a variety of dental molds – tops on the top, bottoms on the bottom, come into view. It’s jarring, even more so that the molds are embedded in blue velvet like gems would be in a jewel box. It raises the question, what is precious? And why?

Gan Xu, whose artist statement reads “I am not an artist,” pairs an Asian-inspired ink portrait against a digital reproduction of the same portrait, photocopied and reduced to postage-stamp size. The photocopy is stuck in the middle of a huge tapestry to exaggerate its importance, or perhaps, to highlight the shortcomings of the digital version.

Meg Brown Payson’s “Pulse” paintings are at once transient and grounded – a wisp of white acrylic swirled over a set of solid brown ink strokes. There’s a tension between the two elements that lures in the viewer and won’t let go.

The show also includes paintings and mixed-media work by Joan Uraneck; Robert Anderson’s cubelike chest of drawers in painted mahogany; turquoise and rust glazed vases and pots by Mark Johnson; and a series of flat images imposed on richly washed backgrounds by Honour Mack.

It’s a wonderful, often humorous show that’s worth a visit. Spend some time with it. Play the ukuleles. Open the briefcase. But prepare to be surprised.

Art Notes

. Impressionist artist John Kossowan will hold a grand opening for his gallery from 5 to 9 tonight and another opening from 5 to 9 p.m. Aug. 24. The gallery is located on the lower level of 114 Harlow St., below Tesoro restaurant. Kossowan has set aside gallery space for physically disabled artists. He also will give live art demonstrations. For more information or to reserve gallery space, call 947-3720.