Put yourself in the mind of a 4- or 5-year-old, and copying a shape on the blackboard onto a piece of paper is a much more cognitively complex task than it is for an adult: Understanding the ...

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 6, 2010, Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: Kenneth Noland, Abstract Painter of Brilliantly Colored Shapes, Dies at 85.