The Arc, the Disc, the Cut

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Kelly, Mangold, Taeuber-Arp, and Stella were the key references. Each works through reduction, sets a shaped edge against a flat color field, and draws a line that implies continuation beyond the surface it's on. We understood the material seam at Swoop ADU in the same way: a line abstracted until it reads continuously from the main house through to the ADU.

Ellsworth Kelly cuts the curve out of the wall and turns the room into a frame. Robert Mangold draws the square inside the circle until the two contain each other. Sophie Taeuber-Arp builds compositions where the half-circle, the disc, and the square arrive in tight rhythm, each one displacing the next. Frank Stella takes the protractor and the half-round and treats them as armatures for color, so the geometry becomes a kind of fretwork the hues are stretched across.

Ellsworth Kelly, Red Curve over Blue, screenprint.
(Fig. 1)
Ellsworth Kelly, shaped wall relief. White field with cut black arc.
(Fig. 2)
Ellsworth Kelly, Black Triangle with White. A single shape that turns the gallery wall into a participant in the composition.
(Fig. 3)
Robert Mangold, semicircle with ellipses. Chalk-line drawing inscribed onto a band of orange and grey.
(Fig. 4)
Robert Mangold, square inside circle, graphite on grey panel.
(Fig. 5)
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, vertical composition of stacked half-circles, c. 1934.
(Fig. 6)
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, white painted-wood relief. Overlapping discs and crescents at low relief.
(Fig. 7)
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Construction géométrique, 1942. Black square, disc, and rectangle locked into a single figure.
(Fig. 8)
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, gestural circles study, ink on paper.
(Fig. 9)
Frank Stella, shaped canvas from the Protractor series.
(Fig. 10)
Frank Stella, large Protractor painting. Interlocking arcs and quarter-rounds carrying bands of color.
(Fig. 11)
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