Ellsworth Kelly Extra Long

a long lithograph by ellsworth kelly with 18 horizontal blocks of color spaced out into two rows, a 1982 lithograph by gemini gel.
Ellsworth Kelly, 18 Colors (Cincinnati), 1979-82, lithograph (ed. 57), 16 x 90 in. sheet, Gemini G.E.L., image via MoMA

They’re hard to fit on my walls, but Ellsworth Kelly’s superlong prints are permanently installed in my heart.

The one above, 18 Colors (Cincinnati), is related to Color Panels for a Large Wall (1978), which Mitch Rales bought for the National Gallery in 2005. When Kelly made it for some bank in Cincinnati, it had been two rows, but he reconfigured it for the NGA. It’s not long, or a print, but I also love that the collage study for the three-row reconfiguration looks like Kelly just chopped up one of the Gemini prints and reshuffled it.

Speaking of Glenstone, I thought they went on to get Kelly’s own version, more domestically scaled, probably called Color Panels for a Private Museum Wall of Perfectly Appropriate Size or something. [Oh right, Color Panels for a Large Wall II.] But it’s not on Glenstone’s site, and now I remember wondering what it meant that it had no credit line when they showed it outside their big Kelly show in 2023. (next day update: confirmed, the FLV catalogue lists it as from a “private collection, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery,” which could still be the Raleses, or whoever beat them to it.]

a long lithograph by ellsworth kelly with four tumbling monochrome diamond/rhombus shapes, in blue, black, red, and green, 2001 from gemini gel
Blue/Black/Red/Green, 2001, lithograph, ed. 45, 24 7/8 by 88 3/4 in., Gemini GEL via LA Modern

Anyway, there is also Blue/Black/Red/Green (2001), a four-color lithograph of four monochrome blocks, that’s even bigger.

ellsworth kelly print titled the river is four contiguous vertically oriented prints abutting each other to make one long print. each image is mostly horizontal and dense black lines on white, references to the way light bounces off a river, via gemini gel
The River (State), 2004, lithograph, ed. 10, 47 1/2 x 116 1/2 in. (as framed), image via Gemini GEL

But I think the biggest is The River and The River (State) (2003), which clock in at 116 1/2 inches long, almost ten feet. Kelly did a portfolio of eight similar lithographs, States of The River (2005), which represented light playing across the surface of eight different rivers. The big The River is the size of four of those prints, side by side, with no borders, but the relative density of the image makes me wonder if Kelly printed all eight stones on top of each other. The time to ask might have been in 2023, when all the River prints were exhibited together at the Edward Hopper House Museum. The River edition were mounted on aluminum, becoming real objects [sic].

a double height ellsworth kelly lithograph on aluminum comprised of four plates printed twice each, each with brushy, scratchy, unevenly striated patterns of mostly horizontal lines in black on white that supposedly evoke light reflecting on the surface of a river, but let's be real, these resemble details of brushmarks made with a stiff, mostly empty brush. but that's the power of the artist, to say, The River II. via joni weyl
Ellsworth Kelly, The River II, 2005, two 4-color lithographs, each 40 x 109″, on two “conjoined aluminum panels”, ed. 8, image via Joni Weyl

[next morning update: According to the Joni Weyl press release for the original Rivers show [pdf] I got this entire sequence wrong. The River wall sculpture came first, a giant 12-color lithograph of various blacks mounted on aluminum. The River (State) came second, mounted on Sintra and framed. Only then did the portfolio of single-color, single plate prints, States of The River come to be. As a bonus, two proofs of The River, including one where one plate had been rotated, hung on Kelly’s studio wall long enough for him to decide to make them a work, too, superlong AND supertall. The result is The River II (2005), a wall sculpture of two 4-color lithographs on aluminum, unframed. It’s mentioned once by Joni Weyl, and then never againThe announcement also notes the series, which relates to early chance-based drawings of the Seine from the 1950s, was “rekindled by 4 x 6″ postcards,” and now I think I must know more about those.

[a few minutes later update, from the archived version of the Gemini catalogue raisonné, which is being upgraded:

“Kelly’s Rivers project dates to 2002, when Gemini sent 4 x 6-inch black-and-white cards to the artist. The cards were from rejected and cut-up impressions of Black [2001] (EK01-1470). Kelly proposed changing the scale of the imagery for new prints. Through examination of the two Mylars that went into the making of Black, small portions of them were identified as the basis for the 4 x 6-inch cards and then subsequently isolated and enlarged.” Also each of the four card-based images became two plates (plus a third, for the 12-color print), which eight were used for the portfolio. Anyway, they are brushstrokes that reminded him of rivers. This Rivers stuff is like the blog post version of a parasitic twin. But definitely get you a print foundry that’ll send you postcards made from your destroyed proofs.]

a very long ellsworth kelly print, ek/spectrum, is the artist's headshot printed six times in a row, in the pale colors of the visual light rainbow. via gemini gel
EK/Spectrum II, 1990, lithograph in an ed. 50, 25 5/8 x 94 in., via Gemini [There is also a Spectrum I and III, so this is the earlier photocopy distortion.]
a very long ellsworth kelly print, jack/spectrum, is the artist's husband's close up smile printed six times in a row, in the pale colors of the visual light rainbow. via gemini gel
Jack/Spectrum, 1990, lithograph in an ed. 35, 25 1/8 x 92 1/2 in., via Gemini

I guess I’m not so hot for the two superlong Spectrum prints with headshots of Kelly and his husband Jack Shear. They’re blown up photocopies of beaming Polaroid portraits, distorted and dissolving, and now repeating like an imagistic glitch. But I am very happy for them.

Ellsworth Kelly, Purple/Red/Gray/Orange, 1988, 4-color lithograph in ed. 18, 51 3/4 × 225 1/4 in. sheet, an absolute beast from Gemini GEL, image via Tate

But nothing beats the 1988 monster print, Purple/Red/Gray/Orange, which answered the question, how big a roll of Arches you got? It is almost 19 feet long. MoMA installed it in a print survey show in 1996. One sold for less than $10,000 in 2010? For a Kelly that size, that’s a bargain at 100x the price.