Printed paper on printed card
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/ellsworth-kelly-1391" aria-label="More by Ellsworth Kelly" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Ellsworth Kelly</a>
Saint Martin Landscape
Presented by Tyler Graphics Ltd in honour of Pat Gilmour, Tate Print Department 1974-7, 2004
abstraction
adults
beach
body
breast
Caribbean, St Martin
countries and continents
defacement
emotions, concepts and ideas
female
figure
formal qualities
from recognisable sources
landscape
leisure and pastimes
mountain
nudes
people
photographic
places
pornography
recreational activities
sea
seascapes and coasts
social comment
society
travel / tourism
woman
<p>Although Kelly is known as an abstract artist, some critics have detected references to landscape underlying the curved forms of his paintings and sculpture. This work stems from a postcard-sized collage made by Kelly in the 1950s. It remains an uncharacteristic work. He became interested in the Surrealists while studying in Paris in the late 1940s.</p><p><em>Gallery label, November 2004</em></p>
paper print printed card
22 November 2004 – 4 April 2005
2005-04-04
15 November 2004
2004-11-15
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2004-11-22
Tyler Gift
Collection based display
3 April 2017 – 5 October 2020
2020-10-05
3 April 2017 – 5 October 2020
2020-10-05
2017-04-03
Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/
2017-04-03
Refiguring American Abstraction
Collection based display
Saint Martin Landscape
image: 388 × 557 mm
Frame: 818 × 982 × 30 mm
Presented by Tyler Graphics Ltd in honour of Pat Gilmour, Tate Print Department 1974-7, 2004
<div class="text">
<p>This collage by the American artist Ellsworth Kelly shows a section of a nude female torso placed over a tropical-looking landscape. The composition is divided into three horizontal sections of paper: a strip of landscape at the top, a middle section containing the woman’s body and a smaller section of landscape below. Within this arrangement are also several other layered elements: a top section of sky punctuated by silhouetted hills beneath; a breast and naval; and finally, in the lower right portion of the composition, a lake and fields. Despite this fragmentation, the work contains several harmonious elements. Most obviously, the bottom landscape layer is a visual continuation of the top, so that they appear to be two parts of the same image. The shape of the breast to the left is echoed by the circular shapes formed by the surface of the lake and the peaks of the hills. Furthermore, the ripped white edges of the image of the woman echo the jagged shapes formed by the rocks and the mountains.</p>
<p>By the time he made this work in 1979, Kelly had been living and working in Spencertown, New York, for nine years. That same year he built a studio adjacent to his house, in which <i>Saint Martin Landscape</i> may have been created (see Waldman 1996, p.37). The art historian Diane Waldman notes that Kelly sometimes used magazine pages to form his collages, which he cut up and rearranged (see Waldman 1996, p.18). In this collage, the two visible tear lines at the upper and lower edges of the image of the woman suggest that the artist tore out and then affixed this section of paper onto the landscape scene behind. The collage’s title refers to the location shown in the image, which is the island of Saint Martin in the north-east Caribbean, and the tree-covered hills that can be seen are typical of the island’s foliage.</p>
<p>While Kelly is best known as an abstract artist, several historians and critics have identified references to landscapes in the curved forms of his paintings and sculptures. The critic Carter Ratcliff has noted that curves appeared in Kelly’s art early in his career, from the 1940s onwards, as in the arched form in <i>Kilometer Marker</i> 1949 (private collection) (see Waldman 1996, p.57). Another early inspiration for Kelly was that of surrealism, one that can be traced back to his residency in Paris in 1948 and in particular Kelly’s interest in drawings by the French writer Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) (see Waldman 1996, p.10). This influence is particularly evident in the unlikely juxtaposition of the female form and the land in <i>Saint Martin Landscape</i>.</p>
<p>This work<i> </i>could be seen to<i> </i>utilise chance practices and seemingly random combinations. Kelly may have controlled the appearance of the torn white lines at the edges of the woman’s torso, but this would only have been possible to a certain extent; beyond this, the process of tearing it has contributed a chance element to its appearance. Similarly, it is likely that the image of the island of Saint Martin was simply at hand when Kelly was working on this collage, along with that of the woman’s body. The introduction of chance into this work is significant within Kelly’s collage work more generally. Writers on his collages draw attention to a series of eight coloured grids he created in the early 1950s, all of which are made up of a set of small coloured paper squares cut up by the artist and positioned in random compositions. Kelly said of these in 2009: ‘the collages employed different systems and arrangements, using chance to organise where a spectrum of eighteen colours would be placed’ (Kelly in Grunenberg 2009, p.64, accessed 11 May 2015).</p>
<p>Kelly is known for the large abstract paintings that he has produced since the 1940s, and his work was being exhibited widely in America at the time that <i>Saint Martin Landscape</i> was created, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Collage is viewed as an important medium within Kelly’s work more generally, and while this example can be viewed as sitting at odds with his other collages – for instance, it is much smaller in size and does not utilise a grid – it reflects Kelly’s broader approach to his creative practice, which Ratcliff has described as ‘playing the abstract off the figurative, mediating between literal flatness and illusions of depth, object and image, real space and pictorial space’ (Ratcliff in Waldman 1996, p.61).</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>John Coplans, <i>Ellsworth Kelly</i>, New York 1972.<br/>Diane Waldman, <i>Ellsworth Kelly: A Retrospective</i>, exhibition catalogue, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1996.<br/>Christoph Grunenberg, ‘Sixty Years at Full Intensity’, <i>Tate Etc.</i>, no.16, Summer 2009, pp.64–7, <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/sixty-years-full-intensity">http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/sixty-years-full-intensity</a>, accessed 11 May 2015.</p>
<p>Louise Hughes<br/>May 2015</p>
<p>
<i>Supported by Christie’s.</i>
</p>
</div>

Summary
2017-05-30T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<p>Although Kelly is known as an abstract artist, some critics have detected references to landscape underlying the curved forms of his paintings and sculpture. This work stems from a postcard-sized collage made by Kelly in the 1950s. It remains an uncharacteristic work. He became interested in the Surrealists while studying in Paris in the late 1940s.</p>

Display caption
2004-11-22T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
abstraction adults beach body breast Caribbean, St Martin countries and continents defacement emotions, concepts and ideas female figure formal qualities from recognisable sources landscape leisure and pastimes mountain nudes people photographic places pornography recreational activities sea seascapes and coasts social comment society travel / tourism woman