Tet

Tet (1958), by Morris Louis, is a painting composed of four fan-like stains of blues, greens, violets, and yellows. The colors converge and slide into each other, giving them the qualities of liquid. The pools at the bottom of the painting reveal the artist's method and process; the colors have forged deltas originating from these concentrated areas of watered down pigment. Louis used gravity to manipulate the thinned paint, resulting in these streams and fans of color. Currently it is in the Whitney Museum of American Art and was exhibited in "American Art, 1940-1965: Traditions Reconsidered" and in the Whitney exhibit "Synthetic". Morris Louis (née Morris Louis Bernstein) was an American painter who is often categorized in the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, but has also been placed in the Color Field artists and the Minimalists. His painting Tet, from 1958, is an example of his work with the staining method which he used for the majority of his career. Louis was a prodigy of the notable critic Clement Greenberg. Greenberg was introduced to Louis via Kenneth Noland, a friend of the artist who also lived in Washington DC. Greenberg in turn introduced Louis to galleries and to artists in New York such as Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Helen Frankenthaler. It was Frankenthaler who created the technique of staining: a process using thinned paint and gravity on an unstretched and untreated canvas. Greenberg admired Frankenthaler's technique because of his theories on “purism” within the arts. Greenberg believed that painting's one characteristic which distinguished it from other art forms was its “flatness.” This quality was enhanced by the staining process. The paint actually soaked into the surface of the canvas, showing no three-dimensional qualities. Frankenthaler's painting Mountains and Sea would stand as Louis's primary influence in his shift from mimicry of German Expressionism to his more recognizable work with staining. After Greenberg introduced Louis to the technique, he championed the artist's paintings as “pure” paintings, more so even than Greenberg's previous prodigy, Jackson Pollock. Louis’ paintings are divided into several groups, Tet belonging to the Veils II series. Louis used his staining technique throughout his short career, and his ability to mix both “muddiness and density” allow individual pigments to be simultaneously highlighted and muted within the same canvas.