Drought

The Tate Gallery, London (the UK).

Acrylic on canvas.

The work refers to a series of paintings, tentatively referred to as the “targets”, although the author did not intend to depict any object but merely represented various colour combinations in the form of circles. Unlike other works by Kenneth Noland of this cycle, “Drought” consists of narrow colour bars that alternate with wide ones and make the image less similar to a target. A long examination of the circles in the picture creates the illusion of continuous rotation, causing slight dizziness. This effect is achieved due to intermittent blue stripes and a contrasting combination of opposing shades of the colour wheel.