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Richmond Burton, “Spectrum Stretch,” 2007, oil on wood panel, 36 by 80 inches.

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Norman Bluhm (American, 1921–1999), “Princess Cuervo,” 1985, oil on canvas, 72 by 84 inches.

MUST RUN 6/27

‘COLOR CLIMAX’ ON VIEW AT JAMES GRAHAM & SONS, w/2 cuts

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NEW YORK CITY — James Graham and Sons present “Color Climax,” a group invitational exhibition featuring exuberantly polychromed paintings, sculpture, hybrid forms and painted installations executed by contemporary American artists and on view through August 15.

Conceived as a continuance of the conversation about color begun by the recent “Color Chart” show at the Museum of Modern Art, “Color Climax” updates artistic interaction with color.

“Color Chart” examined a turn toward commercial color. The exhibition demonstrated the late Modernist reaction to the “romantic quest for personal expression.” “Color Chart” examined the use among artists of standardized colors provided by commercially produced industrial paints with structured regular formats. “Color Chart” was inspired by David Batchelor’s book from 2001, Chromophobia, and its key phrase borrowed from Frank Stella: “I tried to keep the paint as good as it is in the can.”

“Color Climax” questions whether “Color Chart,” through its examples (in many cases) of artworks that approximated regimented orderings of color samples, did not, in fact, unwittingly become an illustration of the Batchelor book’s observation that Western culture is afraid of color.

In the decade flowing Stella’s hard-edged colored paintings, gestural marks from his own hand became an element in this work. Perhaps he found, through working with unmixed color, that the gesture did not automatically make reference to the artist’s emotional state.

“Color Climax” associates working with color as jouissance: bliss and communion with the other, desired object, but a pleasure close to death. It reveals artists using color crucially, as if in the throes of sexual response, they tend to shed formalities.

In Norman Bluhm’s painting, floral and labial forms underline the sensuality of his electric pastels and silky wet paint. Sarah Braman also uses sexual metaphor in her mix of colliding or intertwined wedges that interlock drippily painted and hard plastic elements.

Combining industrial paint with artist colors, Richmond Burton’s knotted braid motif nets a tesserae of geometric forms flanked by silver banks. James Hyde’s photographed spring fever of blossoms support roughly ruffled Day-Glo stepped interior rectangle.

Judy Ledgerwood’s painted foyer in hot pink is overlaid with her own paintings and decorative patterns. Liz Marcus’ psychedelic rainbows disguise period silhouettes. Rebecca Morris’s darkish triangle debunks pictorial order as green and black gestures hustle the picture plane.

Cordy Ryman’s painted relief combines painting and sculpture, as an ascending red and silver geometric trellis straddles a corner.

James Graham & Sons is at 32 East 67th Street. For more information, 212-535-5767 or www.jamesgrahamandsons.com