Red Blue Green 1963

Ellsworth Kelly made "Red Blue Green" using canvas stretched over a wood support, and then painted with commercially produced acrylic paints. The flat, uniform fields of color in “Red Blue Green” emphasize the material quality of the paint itself. The evenness suggests an industrial mode of production, contrasting with the traditional, expressive brushwork of painting. There's an insistent frontality to the design, as if it were meant to be reproduced as a printed image, and this too speaks to mass culture. The hard edges of the color blocks also highlight the work’s construction. The shapes are carefully planned and executed, with precise boundaries between each color, and this gives the painting a kind of built quality, as if it were a carefully joined construction in painted wood. Thinking about the materials, making, and contexts of "Red Blue Green" helps us to understand the artwork’s full meaning, challenging traditional distinctions between art and design.