POSSIBLE BROCHURE

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06797577
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: March 9, 2023
• Document Release Date: January 29, 2021
• Case Number: F-2011-00399

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Possible Brochure
The paintings in CIA Headquarters were given or lent to the Agency
from the American abstract art collection of Vincent Melzac, a
Washington businessman and friend of several early OA directors. An
art lover who could not afford old masters, Melzac collected paintings by
young local artists (once buying a whole room full from a man who
needed money to pursue new ideas). The Agency's pictures from the
Melzac collection span the whole of the remarkably creative period called
"Washington color painting."
Before photography, painters aspired to realism, and their great
achievements were in perspective and modeling�the use of light and
dark to create an illusion of three dimensions. When photography
preempted that field, many artists abandoned realism to concentrate on
the "essence of painting." It has always been recognized that some
paintings are better than others and a few are great; and since ancient
Greece, artists have tried to analyze (apart from intellectual content) the
relationships of shapes and colors that make a picture succeed or fail.
Now they began studying the science of optics and the psychology of visual
perception; testing their theories in the laboratory (on canvas), they
produced the now familiar works of impressionism and cubism.
The artistic hiatus of World War II was followed by a creative
explosion in an the arts�painting, music, and literature. All were notable
,for a deliberate refection, deserved or not, of old forms and an insistent
� self-expression (the artists called themselves abstract expressionists)
`.Scorning realism, which they called "illusion," they focused on
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themselves their personalities and states of mind�and on the materials
and processes of painting. Working over their canvases in many layers of
color, they emphasized the action of painting, the manual gesture in the
streaks, angles, and intensity of their brushwork. Abstract expressionist
paintings in Headquarters include BIuhrn's Passing Waterfall and French -
75 and Mehring'VBfilliiiiit; and Whirling, (on NHB 2). frhat style is still
alive and well, as in the 1989 paintings Calligraphy and Rain Forest (NHB
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3) by Epstein] tfler,t hat-�.4-4
In Washington in the late 1950s some of Vincent Melzac's artist
friends tired of the expressionist approach and started trying deliberately to
remove themselves (their personalities and even their painting
technique) from their work. Focusing on color as having its own kind of
meaning�"the irrational, often emotional, effect of color"�they tried to
avoid lines and shapes that anyone could interpret as images. To remove
the hand of the artist they used transparent washes, sometimes actually
poured, to stain the canvas in unpredictable ways. Experimenting with
optical effects--"what the eye can touch"�they reached for space and light
with floating lines and pools of color.
Mehring's Diagonal (NHB 2) and Downing's Concentric Squares
(NHB 3) are examples of the Washington artists' "transparent" style, and
their all-over "space" paintings include Mehring's two large canvases
Orange and Gray (011B main corridor) and Downing's[Dapp1 and
Thorrias'sTMlifs RefredigtO(NHB 2). These quintessentially "color school"
_
works depend for their impact not on photographic representation or
conceptual meaning but on face-to-face encounter with simple color and
texture. They are more about how color vibrates in the eye (Dapple) than
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about how it occupies the surface of the canvas (Rain Forest).
Continuing to study color as content, some of the Washington
artists moved on to test simplified formats�ribbons or circles of intense
color; examples are Davis's Black Rhythm and Mektring's Reverse Edge
(on NHB 3) and Downing's Center Grid (on NHB 2). Downing went
further, into the geometrically shaped canvases and flat colors illustrated
in Fold II (NHB 1). By the mid-1960s most of the Washington group
had switched to intellectualized painting, firm edges, and opaque
pigment�but critics now agree that their transparent or all-over works
were their finest.
While Washington was exploring color in this way, some young
New York painters turned in the 196Os from abstract expressionism to the
stylized realism of pop art. With its rambunctious images drawn from the
everyday world (soup cans, comic strips), this was welcomed by the public
as more understandable than abstract art. The Agency's one example of
pop art is Arrows (OHB I) by Neuman.
The Washington Color School no longer exists, but some of its
paintings are among the best of the twentieth century. Vincent Melzac
said he felt fortunate to have lived in Washington and been the friend of
some of the most brilliant painters of the 1950s and 1960s. "I found
satisfaction simply in their struggle to create good work�whether they
managed to or not�and l have always enjoyed sharing the works of art
that l have discovered."
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