Testament 1964

Jeremy Moon made this painting called ‘Testament’ sometime before 1973, and just look at those blocks of color! I wonder about the headspace of artists making hard-edge paintings. Moon’s playing with the idea of pure color and form. It’s almost like he’s saying, “Hey, what happens when you just let colors be colors, standing side by side?” The orange and red are warm, kind of fiery, and the green and blue are cool, butting up against each other like neighbors. What happens when you get colors competing, just like that? The painting's surface looks super smooth, almost like it’s been ironed flat. It's a bold statement, especially when you think about how painters like Rothko were doing their thing with hazy color fields. I can imagine Moon thinking, “Let’s make it clean, let’s make it sharp, let’s see what happens.” He's playing with ideas from artists like Barnett Newman, while really paving his own way. That’s what being an artist is all about, right?