Pillar of Delay, 1961
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Dimensions
- Frame (wood with gold trim): 88 1/4 x 41 x 1 9/16 in. (224.16 x 104.14 x 3.97 cm) Image: 87 1/2 x 39 1/2 in. (222.25 x 100.33 cm)
- Accession Number
- 89.20
- Credit
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Rita and Taft Schreiber Collection Given in loving memory of her husband, Taft Schreiber, by Rita Schreiber
Inspired by abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler, Louis began “staining” his canvases with thinned-down paint in the mid-1950s. Casting aside the traditional brush, palette, and easel, Louis utilized gravity as a tool: he created Pillar of Delay and other so-called Stripe pictures by carefully pouring streaks of diluted paint from the top of the raw, unprimed canvas to form vertical bands, or stripes, of overlapping and abutting colors. The combination of pigment seeping into the woven canvas, the soft blending of colors, and the vertical direction of the paint endows Pillar of Delay with a sense of slow motion.
