One day in 1968, Sam Gilliam was leaning out of his studio window in Washington DC as a neighbour hung her washing. The painter, who has died aged 88, was bewitched by how the damp material sagged under its own weight, and the clothes and sheets billowed from the clothesline in the wind. What if he could make the canvases of his abstract paintings do something similar?
Gilliam was already beginning to make a name for himself as part of the so-called Washington Color School, a group of painters united in their interest in abstract works that juxtaposed solid blocks of colour. Now he sought something freer. His “drape” works saw him first remove the stretcher from his paintings, mixing his vibrant tones not with a brush but by pouring and flinging it across the loose canvas. Once it had dried, Gilliam would knot and tie the painted material into concertinaed and scrunched forms. The abstract work, which hovered between painting and sculpture, would then be hung from the gallery ceiling or might fall like a curtain from the walls. Carousel State (1968) hangs from five knotted points, the resulting creases adding shadows and folds to the painted puddles of acid pink and watery yellow and blue.
