THE PAINTINGS FROM THE VINCENT MELZAC COLLECTION EXHIBITED IN THE NEW HEADQUARTERS BUILDING REPRESENT A PERIOD IN AMERICAN ART CENTERED IN WASHINGTON D.C. BETWEEN 1958 TO 1962

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06797574
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: March 9, 2023
• Document Release Date: January 29, 2021
• Case Number: F-2011-00399

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The paintings from the Vincent Melzac collection exhibited in the New
Headquarters Building represent a period in American art centered in
Washington D.C. between 1958 to 1962, that has since come to be known as
the Washington Color School. As an art style, it was both related to the
New York-based Abstract Expressionism, which dominated American modernism
throughout much of the 1950s, and was a reaction against it. Abstract
Expressionism itself may be viewed as an expressly American manifestation
of the modern "romantic" spirit in art, which historically is defined as
the aesthetic expression of oneself. With its focus on color as content,
the Washington Color School in many ways acted as a transition from the
highly subjective and gestural, apparently undisciplined paintings of the
Abstract Expressionists to the various art styles of the 1960s, such as
Minimalism and Op Art, which allowed color and color relationships to be
the very subject of the painting.
Art styles can be set in radical directions for any number of reasons,
things:
o the industrial revolution, which created a middle class that not
t!..�
only changed the nature of art patronage but also the S'ubjecf-Mdtter of -'
from philosophical to scientitior. poli.cical. the i�epr.esentatif.onali
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objectified art that- has Lome .t.p be ddentifie9.,-viit-q Wt-qecn.-1;tya1ue was,
in the 19th and 20th centurieslichallefted andefect4d:W;_17among other
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race;
art, from grandoise depictions to mundane moments in contemporary time and
o scientific and technological developments: in the 19th century, it
was the invention of photography, initially viewed as a threat to painting,
that eventually liberated the painter from the traditional role of recorder
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to one of explorer; in the 1950s, the development of the
paints opened new possibilities to painters; advances in
optics, which enabled even lay people such as artists to
synthetic acrylic
the science of
study the physical
passage of light across a surface; and, related to the latter,
o the philosophical examination of light and color, which fascinated
even Aristotle, for whom color was "flawed light.. .between divine radiance
and stygian darkness," to the late-19th century mystical and occult
movements and their attendant claims of color as symbol, and including the
18th century English philosopher Edmund Burke, whose statement, "greatness
of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime," influenced mid-20th
century American modernists to search for the sublime in large canvases
filled with color;
o and finally, in the specific case of post-World War II American
modernism, the philosophical and political reaction against the ideologies
of the 1930s that were viewed as morally and philosophically bankrupt
following the devastation of the war, a reaction that was manifest in the
European-bred philosophy of Existentialism, which turned away from fixed
ideas, patterns, or standards. This formed in large part the intellectual
matrix of Abstract Expressionism, evident in its frantic and often violent
gestures and compressed space, and it also influenced the Washington Color
School inasmuch as it was something the Washington painters rejected in
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favor of a greater openness and clarity of design, stronger structures, a
lyrical attitude toward color, and a slower, more deliberate technique of
staining the canvas rather than brushing the paint onto the surface.
"Staining" had its origins in the work of Jackson Pollock, one of
Abstract Expressionism's best known exponents. New York painter Helen
Frankenthaler saw a 1951 Pollock painting in which he used enamel on raw,
unprimed canvas, resulting in a color that actually penetrated the fabric
and not just lay upon the surface. Frankenthaler in turn introduced
Washington painters Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis to staining in 1953,
who saw this as a means to achieve in their paintings a greater color
intensity -- which is naturally diminished with the prerequisite priming or
underpainting, and also as a means to dispense with the more traditional
spatial effects in painting, such as perspective. The development of the
synthetic acrylic paint gave them this desired color intensity: unlike
oils, acrylic can be used safely on an unprimed canvas (oils without primer
on a canvas would rot the canvas fiber), and acrylic is easily thinned with
water to a consistency that makes it easy to direct the paint across the
canvas. And, unlike oil, which cannot penetrate the fabric of the primed
canvas, acrylics dry quickly and form a water-resistant but highly flexible
bond with the material, becoming identified with the raw cotton surface,
conveying a sense of color as somehow disembodied and more purely optical,
a color that opens and expands the picture plane. In their search for the
"sublime," the modernists followed Burke's advice and employed canvases
"great of dimension" with large, simple areas of "soakstained" color, close
in value, that inundate the eye. Along with the large size, which some
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111Firc�ritics interpret as being evocative of the vast American landscape, and
the stained planes of color, the artists suppressed all literal references,
further emphasizing the integrity of the flatness of the picture plane.
This purging of the personal, the literary, the representational, and
the spatial from art reinforces an "art for art's sake" aesthetic.
Modernist art of the 1950s and 1960s stresses the purely pictorial aspects
of picture-making, not the more traditional and familiar Western narrative
values. Interestingly, in so doing, modernist art has actually, however
inadvertently, revived art historical interest in certain long-forgotten
Old Masters whose work similarly may be viewed in terms of abstract spatial
and color relationships.
Modernist art of the 1950s and 1960s complements the modern
architectural design of our two headquarters buildings and also complements
the technological theme of artwork in other space in this building in
particular. The art is either owned by the Agency of loaned by the
Melzacs, longtime friends of the Agency.
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