Ellsworth Kelly, Doctor of Fine Arts
Post-war Paris was thought to be for an artist the right place at the wrong time. But your decision to spend those years far from the exploding New York art scene showed the fierce independence that has raised your work above that of any one school or movement to an aesthetic that is all its own. “The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me,” you have said, “is to see something, and then translate how I see it.” For more than fifty years you have done just that, mixing mediums to turn simple scenes (say, a shadow falling on a stairway or the arch of a bridge) into abstractions of vivid intensity. Your works do not represent objects so much as they become themselves objects that in their boldness draw viewers beyond mere seeing — “to perfect” as one critic has said “the art of noticing.” “Kelly questions the nature of vision itself,” has said another, “and in the process re-examines the very means of art, the nature of its languages, and its expressive potential.” That you draw such inspiration from your immediate surroundings adds an additional thrill to those of us blessed, like you, to live amid the beauty of the Berkshires.
I hereby declare you recipient of the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, entitled to all the rights, honors, and privileges appertaining thereto.
June 5, 2005