Brown Line Painting 1968

Editor: Here we have Ronnie Landfield’s “Brown Line Painting” from 1968, an acrylic on canvas. It strikes me as a playful but somewhat chaotic arrangement of colorful lines against this dark, textured background. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Immediately, I’m drawn to the materiality of the painting. Look at how Landfield builds up the surface, using acrylic paint, a relatively new material at the time, to create this textured ground. What does that choice of material suggest to you about his engagement with the art world? Editor: Well, the use of acrylic definitely situates it within a certain era of modernism. Is the application a kind of comment on mass production? Curator: Exactly. Think about the accessibility and workability of acrylic versus oil paints. Acrylics allowed for faster production, less mixing involved, catering to the high demands and commercial interests of the art market. What do you make of these linear shapes then, seemingly applied so rapidly? Editor: The lines are so interesting, it looks almost like a screen print but definitely is not. The varying width of these, their direction…are they disrupting traditional notions of composition or harmony, perhaps? Curator: Precisely. These aren't delicately placed brushstrokes, but assertive strokes that draw attention to the act of painting itself. Consider how this challenged the hierarchy between the ‘skill’ involved in art and the raw physical labor of production, reducing painting to a seemingly basic act. And what does this democratization suggest to you? Editor: That it might suggest a break from the more romantic, idealized versions of artmaking to show it, quite literally, as labor. Thank you, I’m going to be considering acrylic painting in a different way now! Curator: My pleasure. Hopefully, thinking through these material choices sheds new light on our understanding of Abstract Expressionism and its societal ties.