Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Raul Meel
Estonian; 20th-century
New Brunswick, NJ: Zimmerli Art Museum
73%
Traveling into the Green (Teekond rohu-luuse). 1973-79. Acrylic on canvas
The use of eight canvases was probably a practical necessity for Meel in making such a large painting. But it goes beyond practicality to become aesthetic. For one, the vertical divisions between each of the canvases adds visual interest to the otherwise horizontal composition. Two, the sole triangular form would likely not have been striking enough on its own to carry the painting, but breaking it up into regular intervals serves both to undermine its blandly monolithic appearance and to make it seem, somehow, not just to recede but to move rightwards. Three, the regular size of the eight canvases conflicts nicely with the irregular size of the brown triangle as it attenuates. Other notable features include the asymmetry of the brown on its green background; the black bar atop the triangle, which troubles your ability to read this as either pure design or depictive of something; the handsome relationship between the three colors. In all, this is a sharp bit of design made artistically substantial by means of its scale and mode of presentation. (TFS, 2025)