The Red Side
Primary
Alfred Leslie
(New York, New York, 1927–Brooklyn, New York, 2023)
NationalityAmerican, North America
Date1961
MediumOil on linen canvas
DimensionsFramed: 78 × 104 5/8 in. (198.1 × 265.7 cm)
Sight: 78 1/16 × 104 1/8 in. (198.2 × 264.5 cm)
Sight: 78 1/16 × 104 1/8 in. (198.2 × 264.5 cm)
Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Mari and James A. Michener, 1991.253
Rights Statement
Collection AreaModern and Contemporary Art
Object number1991.253
On View
Not on viewThe Red Side was selected by curator and art historian H. H. Arnason for inclusion in the important Guggenheim Museum show American Abstract Expressionists and Imagists in 1961. The Guggenheim exhibition acknowledged Leslie as an important inheritor of the abstract expressionist aesthetic, which can be seen directly in this work. The Red Side demonstrates Leslie’s interest in both the gestural style of Willem de Kooning, seen on the right side of the work in his loose brushwork, and Barnett Newman’s artistic vocabulary of planes of color separated by vertical lines, as seen on the left. Leslie juxtaposes diverse fragments of other painters’ artistic characteristics like a huge collage.
Exhibitions
