Four Color Frame Painting #5 (Parasol Unit) 1984

This "Four Color Frame Painting #5" by Robert Mangold presents a puzzle of distinct color fields, each neatly bordered yet incomplete. I wonder about Mangold’s process. Did he start with the colors, these blocks of earthy red, mustardy yellow, foresty green, and chocolatey brown? Or did the elegant curve of the drawn line come first, dictating the composition? It’s as though he’s challenging the very idea of a boundary, where a line both defines and divides the pictorial space. The white ground feels like a charged absence, a void that amplifies the presence of the colors. Each carefully chosen hue has a tactile quality, a flatness that somehow feels deep. It’s almost as if Mangold is in conversation with artists like Ellsworth Kelly, but with a twist. It’s painting about painting, but also about how we see and perceive the world. And it invites us to keep the conversation going.