College of Fine Arts The University of New South Wales
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2010 THESIS
The Pink Monochrome Project
The transformation of monochrome painting since the 1980s
By Christopher Dean
June 2010 STATEMENT
This volume is presented as a record of the work undertaken for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Statement ...... 2
Acknowledgments ...... 4
List of figures ...... 5
Research question ...... 6
Abstract ...... 7
Chapter One: Introduction ...... 12
Chapter Two: Methodology and methods ...... 20
Chapter Three: The rise of formalism and the theoretical interpretation of historical abstraction and monochrome painting, 1910-1970 ...... 24
Chapter Four: Artists’ writings, 1910-1970 ...... 32
Chapter Five: The impact of cultral theory on the interpretation of historical and contemporary abstraction and monochrome painting, 1970-2010 ...... 56
Chapter Six: The role of subjectivity, the practice and writings of four contemporary monochrome painters, 1970-2010 ...... 65
Chapter Seven: Cultural interpretations of the colour pink ...... 83
Chapter Eight: Three contemporary exhibitions of monochrome painting ...... 96
Chapter Nine: Conclusions and recommendations ...... 100
Appendix: Pure and applied — the studio component of The Pink Monochrome Project ...... 103
Bibliography ...... 121 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With special thanks to Nicole Ellis and Andrew Christofides for their ongoing academic supervision and Jacqui Spedding for sub-editing and designing this thesis. LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 Black Square, Kazimir Malevich p. 35
Figure 2 Unist Composition II, Vladislav Strezeminski p. 38
Figure 3 Rose Monochrome, Yves Klein p. 41
Figure 4 Monochrome, Ad Reinhardt p. 44
Figure 5 Monochrome, Robert Ryman p. 49
Figure 6 Praise, Agnes Martin p. 52
Figure 7 Desire, Marcia Hafif p. 68
Figure 8 Red painting, Joseph Marioni p. 71
Figure 9 Orange Monochrome (for Peter Halley), John Nixon p. 76
Figure 10 Pink Nightmare, Matthew Deleget p. 81
Figure 11 Gasket Monochrome, Christopher Dean p. 104
Figure 12 Applied Monochrome Painting, Andreas Exner p. 106
Figure 13 D’oyley Monochrome, Christopher Dean p. 107
Figure 14 Forget Foucault Remember Baudrillard, Christopher Dean p.109
Figure 15 1979, No More Puffs at the Star,, Christopher Dean p. 110
Figure 16 I arrived in Australia as a tourist in 1974 after meeting an Australian man in Buenos Aires ( Juan Davila), Christopher Dean p. 111
Figure 17 Middle Age Hard Edge Abstractionist From St. Marys Seeking Same, Christopher Dean p. 114
Figure 18 I grew up in a place where they think poofters are blokes who like women (Ian Milliss). From the series Twelve Rules for a New Academy (gender & sexuality), Christopher Dean p. 120 RESEARCH QUESTION
How can cultural theory be applied to the production and interpretation of monochrome painting? ABSTRACT
This thesis aims to identify the relationships connecting monochrome painting and cultural theory. To achieve this aim the question asked throughout the thesis is “How can cultural theory be applied to the production and interpretation of monochrome painting?” Informing this question are definitions and concepts relating to the practice and interpretation of monochrome painting. This interpretative process is achieved through a close reading of the practice and writing of artists who have produced monochrome paintings over the past one hundred years.
The scope of the methodology informing this thesis focuses on the discourse surrounding abstract or non-objective, two-dimensional, single-colour paintings that generate a visual language through the interpretation and transmission of phenomenal, existential or subjective concerns. As stated by the title of the thesis, the aim of this research project is to test the relationship between a selection of historical and contemporary monochrome paintings in the context of colour theory. The construction of the narrative informing this research project has been produced through the combination of a written thesis and studio component that presents an examination of the way that cultural theory and the colour pink can been used to discuss gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity.
The Pink Monochrome Project is not merely a linear history of monochrome painters who have decided to use the colour pink but is a theoretical account of the way that pink – as an identifiable and distinct colour – operates as a signifier to designate interpretations of gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity. Not all of the artists contained in this thesis have produced pink monochromes and indeed none of the artists discussed in the thesis have developed an art practice that exclusively explores the production of pink monochromes. However, this thesis brings together a selection of artists from different generations who have produced pink monochromes including Yves Klein, Agnes Martin, Marcia Hafif and Matthew Deleget.
As the chronology of this thesis is both contemporary and historical, the secondary question driving the research is “Why has art history marginalised the use of the colour pink in the context of monochrome painting?” This discussion is shapedby an examination of networks of debates and theories that have guided the critical agenda surrounding cultural theory. These debates primarily focus on the interpretation of gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity and are applied to cultural associations informing the interpretation of the colour pink. Aside from the analysis of artworks and theoretical writings, this thesis places an important emphasis on the interpretation of artists’ writings in the context of the evolution and transformation of monochrome painting since the rise of Postmodernism during the 1970s and 1980s.
7 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT
A detailed study of the chromatic associations of monochromes is used in the thesis to demonstrate the way that monochromatic painting, as well as the more general category of abstract art, holds the potential for innovative forms of visual communication. In the context of monochrome painting, the significance of cultural theory is that it holds the potential to interpret the impact of culturally discrete perspectives (including subjectivity and cultural specificity) on the genesis, evolution and transformation of historical and contemporary monochrome painting.
Each of the ten chapters contained in the thesis serve to analyse a specific perspective relating to the theoretical outcomes concerning the role that subjectivity and cultural specificity has played in the overall development of monochrome painting. Through the development of the studio component of the research project, combined with a critical reading of the practices and interpretations of this century-old artistic tendency, this thesis establishes an alternative story in the history of monochrome painting.
Chapter outline
Chapter One: Introduction
The introductory section of the thesis identifies the development of arguments contained within the chapter sequence, providing a structure to the research project. The introduction places an emphasis on the definition of the key concepts contained within the thesis. These concepts are: monochrome painting, cultural theory, identity and cultural specificity.
Chapter Two: Methodology and methods
Chapter two investigates the transformation and evolution of monochrome painting in response to the rise of cultural theory during the 1980s. The research methodology that guides and informs the thesis is developed through the application of interpretative models and a selection of writings that foreground the relationship between monochrome painting and subjectivity. Examples of these writings include Victor Burgin’s Situational Aesthetics, Yves-Alain Bois’ Painting as Model, Thierry de Duve’sKant after Duchamp and Frances Colpitt’s ‘Systems of Opinion’ in Abstract Painting Since 1959. These writings are discussed in the context of the artistic practices of six historical and four contemporary monochrome painters.
Throughout this thesis, the writings of Victor Burgin, Yve-Alain Bois, Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt are used to interpret the historical and contemporary practice of monochrome painting in relation to the primary research question, “How can cultural theory be applied to the production and interpretation of monochrome painting?” The methodological influences of Structuralism, Post-structuralism and cultural theory upon these writings is used to define the limitations of Modernist criticism and art history, specifically that of Wilhelm Worringer, Clive Bell, Herbert
8 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT
Read and Clement Greenberg. The idea that abstraction is an alternative form of representation, rather than a form of non-representation, constitutes the basis of this discussion. Through the analysis of theoretical interpretations and artists’ writings, this position has been developed and refined firstly, by limiting the scope of the discussion to non-objective monochrome painting and secondly, by asking the question, “How have monochrome painters developed a visual language that enables them to communicate their individual identities and cultural specificities?”
Chapter Three: The rise of formalism and the theoretical interpretation of historical abstraction and monochrome painting, 1910-1970: Wilhelm Worringer, Clive Bell, Herbert Read and Clement Greenberg
This chapter presents a critical analysis of the theoretical underpinnings that have informed the interpretation of abstraction and monochrome painting since the early twentieth century. Through an analytical discussion of literature samples from each of the four selected theorists, the narrative contained within this chapter identifies the paradigms and critical limitations of the writings that have been used to discuss abstraction and monochrome painting. The theorists whose writings are discussed in the context of the research question are: Wilhelm Worringer, Clive Bell, Herbert Read and Clement Greenberg.
Chapter Four: Artists’ writings, 1910-1970: Kazimir Malevich, Valdislav Strzeminski, Yves Klein, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman and Agnes Martin
Through an examination of the divergences separating theoretical accounts of monochrome painting from the writing of the artists themselves, this chapter applies the critical techniques of cultural theory1 to qualify the way that the writings of these six particular artists can be reinterpreted in relation to the broader themes of identity and cultural specificity. The artists whose painting and writings are discussed in this chapter are: Kazimir Malevich, Valdislav Strzeminski, Yves Klein, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman and Agnes Martin.
Chapter Five: The impact of cultural theory on the interpretation of historical and contemporary abstraction and monochrome painting, 1970-2010: Victor Burgin, Yve-Alain Bois, Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt
Chapter five examines the writing of four contemporary theorists in the context of the debates that connect monochrome painting to the themes of subjectivity and cultural specificity. The reason why these writers are selected have been because their interpretations and conclusions challenge the established positions of Modernist commentators as discussed in chapter three. This chapter also asks the question, “How has cultural theory provided monochrome painting with the potential for
1 The termcultural theory is used throughout the thesis to provide an investigative framework for concepts including: gender, sexuality, identity, and subjectivity.
9 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT continuity and renewal?” In order to respond to this question, the practice of four contemporary monochrome painters is discussed in chapter six. A specific emphasis has been placed on testing the relationship between the analysis of theoretical writings, the production and interpretation of contemporary monochromes and the writing of contemporary artists. The theorists included in this chapter are Victor Burgin, Yve-Alain Bois, Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt.
Chapter Six: The role of subjectivity, the practice and writings of four contemporary monochrome painters, 1970-2010: Marcia Hafif, Joseph Marioni, John Nixon and Matthew Deleget
The reason for the inclusion of this chapter is twofold: firstly, it serves to compare and contrast the artwork and writings of Marcia Hafif, Joseph Marioni, John Nixon and Matthew Deleget with the theorists discussed in chapter five, and secondly, it aims to qualify the effects of cultural theory on the practice and writings of these artists. Through a discussion of a selection of artist’s writings, an emphasis has been placed on the various ways that the practice of these four artists has been informed by the representation of their individual subjectivities and cultural specificities. Building on the primary research question, this chapter asks, “What particular forms of subjectivity and cultural specificities have these artists chosen to represent?”
Chapter Seven: Cultural interpretations of the colour pink — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, John Gage, David Batchelor, Barbara Nemitz and Barbara Rose
This chapter engages with a selection of historical and contemporary writings that seek to interpret and analyse the colour pink in the context of monochrome painting. Literature from the history of colour theory is discussed with regard to the representational potential of monochrome painting and samples of writing are selected because of the way that their commentaries can be analysed from the critical perspective of cultural theory. The selected literature samples discussed in this chapter are as follows: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Theory of Colours; Johannes Itten’s The Art of Colour, Josef Albers’ The Interaction of Colour, John Gage’s Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction and Color and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism, David Batchelor’s Chromophobia and Colour: Documents of Contemporary Art, Barbara Nemitz’s Pink and Barbara Rose’s Monochromes: From Malevich to the Present.
Chapter Eight: Three contemporary exhibitions of monochrome painting: True Colours, Sydney College of the Arts Gallery, 1998; Monochromes University of Queensland Art Gallery, 2000; and Minus Space, PS1, 2008
This chapter initiates the second part of the research project. The final three chapters contained within this thesis locates the studio research component of this study into a critical framework that relates to my studio practice. Chapter eight serves to identify the way that individual practices of monochrome painters are frequently contextualised through the development of collectives that prioritise collaborative dialogues between individuals and groups. By assessing the significance of
10 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT a selection of contemporary exhibitions that focus on the discourse of monochrome painting, this chapter identifies the origins and development of my professional practice. A particular emphasis is placed on the way that these particular exhibitions have been either directly or indirectly informed by cultural theory. This process is borne out by the attitudes and opinions contained within the writings, essays and criticism that have been produced in order to interpret these exhibitions.
Chapter Nine: Conclusions and recommendations
The final chapter of the thesis assesses the implications of the research project through the way that the individual chapters provide results with regard to defining and affirming the relationship connecting monochrome painting to cultural theory. Through this process the extent of the expected and unexpected outcomes of the research are summarized in relation to individual practices as well as in relation to broader themes informing the history, philosophy and transformation of monochrome painting.
Appendix: Pure and applied—The studio component of The Pink Monochrome Project
The appendix focuses on the formal and conceptual developments that have occurred in my studio practice over the past five years as well as the origins of the research that led to the conception of The Pink Monochrome Project. Through an examination of the intersections of monochrome painting and cultural theory, this chapter discusses the way in which my practical interventions into the practice of monochrome painting have enabled me to develop an expanded formal language through the combination of text and the colour pink. By providing a sequential discussion of the technical and conceptual processes that I have undertaken in the studio, this chapter explains the methods used in the production of experimental, text-based pink monochromes.
Aside from the emphasis that cultural theory places on individual subjectivities and cultural contingencies, the issue of geographical site-specificity plays an important part in the development of The Pink Monochrome Project. The relationship between subjectivity and locality is an important theme within the narrative of the thesis because it situates the representation of subjectivity within the contexts of specific cultural conditions. This appendix cites the way that particular quotations included in the paintings identify the intersections connecting discrete cultural and subjective concerns. The broader conceptual strategies informing the studio research are then linked to the formal elements relating to the issues of colour, format, frames, typeface, size and materials and the way that these design elements are used to substantiate the conceptual and subjective character of the paintings.
11 CHAPTER ONE
Overview
This thesis has been written in tandem with the development of my studio practice. Both the written and studio components of the research project have sought to identify a connection between monochrome painting and cultural theory. The focus of this research project is to investigate the specific ways that cultural theory holds the capacity to foreground the representation of gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity in the works of six historical, and four contemporary, monochrome painters. In addition to this process, the purpose of the research has been to contextualise my practical and theoretical investigations in relation to the works of previous generations of monochrome painters and to a selection of theoretical literature and artists’ writings that have informed the evolution and transformation of monochrome painting since the 1980s. The methodology informing this thesis has been developed in two stages: the first part of the research assesses how monochrome painters responded to paradigm shifts that brought about the introduction of Postmodernism and cultural theory; and the second part applies the interpretative methods of cultural theory – namely a close reading of gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity – to a reinterpretation of the writing of artists and theorists produced during the era of Modernism.
The focus of the research question is concerned with building bridges and making connections between the two apparently unrelated discourses of monochrome painting and cultural theory. At a casual glance, it would be reasonable to suggest that these are seemingly contradictory, if not oppositional, practices, primarily because monochrome painting is frequently associated with Modernism, formalism and essentialism while cultural theory is commonly perceived to be a branch of Postmodernism. Central to the methodology informing this thesis is an application of the deconstructive tendency of cultural theory to monochrome painting as its object and it is this critical relationship that informs the sequence of chapter headings within the thesis.
The ten chapters of the thesis are divided into three sections. The aim of the first section, chapters one and two, is to introduce and outline the narrative sequence of chapter headings contained within the thesis and to define key terms of reference used throughout the discussion, namely: monochrome painting, cultural theory, subjectivity and cultural specificity. Following the Introduction in chapter one, chapter two, Methodology and methods, defines the processes that are
12 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT used to qualify the research samples informing the thesis’ narrative in relation to the research question.
The second section of the thesis extends from chapters three to seven. Chapter three,The rise of formalism and the interpretation of historical abstraction and monochrome painting, 1910-1970, examines the writing of four historical theorists of abstraction in relation to the research question: Wilhelm Worringer, Clive Bell, Herbert Read and Clement Greenberg.
Chapter four, Artists’ writings, 1910-1970, assesses the attitudes of six historical monochrome painters in relation to the writing of the four theorists discussed in the previous chapter. These writings are then discussed in the context of the scope of the research question, “How can cultural theory be applied to the production and interpretation of monochrome painting?” The historical artists discussed in this chapter are Kazimir Malevich, Valdislav Strzeminski, Yves Klein, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman and Agnes Martin.
Chapter five, The impact of cultural theory on the interpretation of contemporary monochrome painting, 1970-2010, discusses the writing of a selection of contemporary theorists who have applied many of the critical positions of cultural theory to the interpretation of monochrome painting. These theorists are: Victor Burgin, Thierry de Duve, Yve-Alain Bois and Frances Colpitt.
Chapter six, The role of subjectivity, the practice and writing of four contemporary monochrome painters, 1970-2010, examines the writing of four contemporary monochrome painters in relation to the writing of the four contemporary theorists discussed in the previous chapter. These artists are: Marcia Hafif, Joseph Marioni, John Nixon and Matthew Deleget.
Chapter seven, Cultural interpretations of the colour pink, discusses the relationship between the interpretation of colour and the representation of subjectivity through a discussion of the writing of a selection of historical and contemporary colour theorists: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, John Gage, David Batchelor, Barbara Nemitz and Barbara Rose.
The third and final section of the thesis consists of chapters eight and nine, along with the appendix, and focuses on the studio research component of The Pink Monochrome Project. Chapter eight, Three contemporary exhibitions of monochrome painting, presents a case study of three recent exhibitions where I have exhibited monochrome paintings. This chapter provides the reader with a contemporary evaluation of the global community associated with the presentation, promotion and interpretation of monochrome painting.
Chapter nine, Conclusions and recommendations, assesses the results of my practical and written research in the context of the way that cultural theory has been applied to the development of my studio practice and the way that monochrome painting has the potential to be interpreted from the critical perspective of cultural theory.
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The appendix, Pure and applied—the studio component of The Pink Monochrome Project, examines the formal and conceptual development of my studio practice over the past five years in relation to the research question and methodology.
Introduction
The ongoing evolution and transformation ofmonochrome painting reflects its adaptation to major historical events such as the Russian Revolution as well as cultural and philosophical developments such as the rise of Existentialism and Postmodernism. In the context of these circumstances, monochrome painting – when viewed either as a singular artistic movement or a fractured series of artistic styles – has continuously adapted and reinvented itself to a series of cultural, political and ideological changes since the early years of the twentieth century. The cultural portability of monochrome painting has enabled it to adapt to a multiplicity of discrete circumstances both historically and globally. Through its evolution the pluralism associated with monochrome painting serves to acknowledge its potential for transformation. Over the past one hundred years monochrome painting has responded to the influence of a diversity of cultural conditions.2 In response to these layers of influence, this thesis aims to demonstrate the potential for analysing monochrome painting through the critical perspectives of cultural theory. The process informing this thesis is to articulate the potential for innovative observations concerning the reinterpretation of historical and contemporary monochrome painting from the perspective of its own history.3
Through a discussion of artists’ writings, this thesis aims to qualify the relationship connecting monochrome painting to the themes of gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity. By presenting a close reading of a specific selection of artists’ writings spanning a period of one hundred years, this research project aims to demonstrate that the theoretical underpinnings of historical and contemporary monochrome painting can be productively interpreted from the critical perspectives of cultural theory. Through an analysis of the writing of monochrome painters, this thesis aims to qualify the way that the ten selected artists discussed in chapters four and six have represented aspects of their individual subjectivity and cultural specificity through monochrome painting. The focus of the methodology informing the thesis has been developed to identify the various gaps and contradictions that separate historical and contemporary theoretical accounts of monochrome painting from the writing and paintings of the artists themselves.
2 Monochrome painting has evolved in many parts of the world including Asia and South America as well as Europe, America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. An example of a culturally specific school of monochrome painting has been observed by Lee Hwaik in her essay ‘Painting Nothing, Monochrome Painting in Korea’, Art Asia Pacific, vol. 3, no. 3, 1996, pp. 68-73. 3 Cultural theory has been influenced by the writing of Michel Foucault, in particular the genealogical method that he developed in The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences, New York: Vintage Books, 1973.
14 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT
Through this process I have sought to identify some of the patterns and relationships connecting my own practical and theoretical research to that of the work of historical and contemporary practitioners of monochrome painting. As suggested by the title of this thesis, the focus of my research has been limited to the discussion and analysis of monochromes within the field of painting. Sculptural works, other than relief painting, as well as those using other materials and methods, such as light and new media, are deemed to be outside of the scope of this research project.
A primary aim of The Pink Monochrome Project involves a study of colour theory and, in particular, an examination of the colour pink. Through a detailed discussion of the attitudes of colour theorists, and through an examination of the practical consequences and results that have been achieved through my studio research into the production of pink monochromes, conclusions are drawn as to the role and status of the colour pink when applied to the interpretation of monochrome painting.
As a singular colour, pink is an unlikely choice for monochrome painters precisely because it can be seen to contradict the rational, essentialist, (and as a consequence) masculine logic of Modernism. Clive Bell said that as a colour pink has the tendency to ‘weaken a composition.’4 This comment reveals a negative attitude towards the inclusion of pink in works of art and from the perspective of cultural theory can be interpreted as a value judgement that characterises the masculine tradition of Modernist painting theory.5
The importance placed on the use of primary colours during the era of Modernism can partly be explained by the metaphysical or theosophical influences that drove artists’ in the direction of their quest for purity. The use of primary colours became a chromatic signifier for purity due to their irreducibility.6 Aside from its associations with gender, pink has also been associated with luxury, aristocracy and decadence.7 An examination of Malevich’s paintings and collages reveals a connection between the colour pink, consumerism and femininity. All of Malevich’s pink works were produced before the October Revolution in 1917. This argument could be extrapolated to explain the reasons why members of the Russian avant-garde did not produce pink monochromes.8
4 Clive Bell, ‘The Aesthetic Hypothesis’, in Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison (eds.), Modern Art and Modernism, London: Harper and Row, 1984, p. 69. 5 Recent commentators such as Terry Smith have argued that the rational logic of Modernism can be identified with masculinity. See Terry Smith, In Visible Touch: Modernism and Masculinity, Sydney: Power Publications, 1997. 6 The most comprehensive study of the spiritual influences and origins of abstraction and monochrome painting is to be found in the exhibition catalogue, The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985, edited by Maurice Tuchman, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1986. 7 Simon Schama in The Power of Art, DVD, BBC Warner, London, 2007. 8 All of Malevich’s paintings and collage works using pink were produced before the October Revolution in 1917 and include: Vanity Case (1913), Lady at the Advertising Column (1914), and Composition with Mona Lisa (1914).
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Simon Schama’s discussion of pink relates to French painting of the eighteenth cenury, notably the work of François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. For Schama, the use of the colour pink in the work of these artists is the embodiment of aristocracy, luxury, decadence and frivolity.
As recently as 2006, Barbara Rose’s comprehensive exhibition catalogue, Monochromes –From Malevich to the Present, omitted pink monochromes from its lexicon of colours.9 Although Yves Klein’s pink monochromes are referred to as ‘rose’ they have been included under the chapter titled ‘Red’. In order to justify these historical and contemporary oversights, cultural theory provides useful frameworks to interpret this situation.
Glossary of key concepts
The key concepts contained within this thesis are: monochrome painting, cultural theory, subjectivity and cultural specificity. For the purposes of an unambiguous definition these concepts are defined as follows:
Monochromes
Monochromes are defined as a highly specific form of painting that employs one colour, or tonal variations of the one particular colour or tone, including a selection of hues and saturations of a single colour. By asking the question “What is a monochrome?” a series of answers can be generated that respond to this question in an inclusive or open way. A narrower or more orthodox definition of the term monochrome is an artwork using a single colour that is limited to an entirely two-dimensional or flat surface that has been painted using only one colour or tone and contains no obvious referential elements. In opposition to this definition most of the monochromes discussed in this thesis, especially those that have been produced by contemporary artists such as John Nixon and Matthew Deleget, could by this standard fall outside of the definition of monochrome painting because they could be considered to be formally impure or because they frequently contain textures or relief elements that incorporate more than one tone or derivation of the one colour or hue and may also contain referential or performative elements. This is also the case with my own monochromes as well as many of Robert Ryman’s paintings, for example, because they contain text.
Another factor that needs to be contested is the collective categorisation of more than one work from this artistic style being referred to as ‘The Monochrome’. Recent histories of monochrome painting have dispensed with the singularity of this type of nomenclature that has frequently been used to synonymously discuss monochrome painting or a grouping of more than one single
9 Barbara Rose, Monochromes: From Malevich to the Present, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
16 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT monochrome. For the purposes of clarity and accuracy, the terms monochromes10 and monochromy11 are used in this thesis to describe a group of monochromes or the broader practice of monochrome painting. These more recent definitions and categories can be seen to relate to cultural theory in that they confirm a position that replaces notions of singularity and originality with collectivity, difference and performativity. The term monochromy has also been referred to as “applied monochrome painting”,12 a definition that corresponds to the definition of cultural theory as an “applied version of Postmodernism.”13
The chronological starting point for my research begins with a study of monochrome painting that developed as a highly experimental form of art at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. In order to set limitations for the scope of this research project, modern monochrome painting is interpreted as a highly innovative paradigm shift in painting that was developed in Russia during the early years of the twentieth century by Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandr Rodchenko and many others. Earlier forms of monochromes, such as those produced by landscape painters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or by Buddhist artists working in the Tantric tradition, have been deemed to be outside of the scope of this thesis.
A salient issue contained within this thesis involves the investigation and critique of the limitations that have informed the definition of monochrome painting as a practice that is frequently perceived to be the outcome of a mystical form of visual asceticism inspired by the gnostic and occult writings of Theosophy and other related metaphysical systems.14 Throughout its continuous development over the past one hundred years, monochrome painting has been popularly classified as either transcendental or spiritual or either materialist or formal. The methodology informing this thesis aims to question the polarity of these two positions by testing established paradigms through a critical analysis of artists’ writings and through the practical results that have been achieved in my studio practice while completing this research project.
Cultural theory
Cultural theory is widely defined as an umbrella term that embraces a network of critical discourses that have emerged since the 1960s.15 These discourses include Post-structuralism, Postmodernism, Feminism, Postcolonialism and Queer Theory. As noted by cultural theorists such as Dick Hebdige, cultural theory developed historically as a branch of sociology and semiotics and it sought to
10 An example of the plural use of the word monochromes is to be found in the catalogue essays accompanying David Pestorius’ survey exhibition, Monochromes, University Art Museum, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, 2000. 11 The termmonochromy was defined by Andreas Exner and can be found in his catalogue essay in Applied Monochrome Painting, Walther Köning, Köln, Germany, 2007. 12 ibid. p. 4. 13 Andrew Milner, Contemporary Cultural Theory, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991, p. 104. 14 Tuchman, The Spiritual in Art, p. 19. 15 Johan Fornas, Cultural Theory and Late Modernity, London: Sage Publications, 1995, p .6.
17 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT define a heuristic concept of culture that places an emphasis on practical techniques related to problem solving. For theorists such as Hebdige, cultural theory is a ‘common sense’ method of identifying and foregrounding issues in late Western capitalist cultures. For Hebdige, cultural theory is an interdisciplinary approach to discussing ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class, identity, gender, sexuality, subcultures and fashion.16 Much of the focus of cultural theory has been an attempt to redefine the status and significance of the human subject.
In relation to this definition of cultural theory, this thesis aims to discuss the impact that these narratives have had on the transformation of contemporary monochrome painting as well as the interpretation of the history of monochrome painting. Through the use of a qualitative research method, this position is tested through a discussion of artists’ writings in chapters four and six and in the context of theoretical writing included in chapters three and five.
It is also important to make clear the reason for including the term cultural theory over other related terms such as Postmodernism and critical theory. Cultural theory places a clear emphasis on the heterological treatment of knowledge.17 In this way, cultural theory is frequently defined as a practical or applied version of Postmodernism and its pragmatic approach to the analysis of culture, as well as its prioritisation of the role of the human subject, is the main reason why it has been included as a key component within the research question. A central concept of this discourse is the importance that cultural theory places on what is frequently referred to as the ‘subjective turn’, in other words, the emphasis that writers’ of cultural theory place on the role of subjectivity in relation to the heterological or interconnected character of contemporary cultures.18
Subjectivity
For the purpose of the thesis, subjectivity is defined as the perspectives, judgements, opinions and experiences of an individual subject. For writers such as Andrew Milner, cultural theory redefines the status of the human subject via the re-territorialisation of subjectivity.19 The recognition of the significance of subjectivity, as well as its redefinition, has been a critical process within cultural theory. This process, involving the redefinition of the status of the human subject, has its origins in the discourses of Marxism, Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis and Feminism. These positions have increasingly contributed to a sustained critique of the notion of the essentialist subject and this issue is a key component of the methodology that has shaped the direction of this thesis. In relation to the discussion of this issue, chapter three develops an analysis of the term intersubjectivity20 in relation to the concept of empathy while chapters four and six place an emphasis on the ability
16 Steven Connor, Postmodernist Culture, Oxford: Blackwell Press, 1989, p. 184. 17 Barbara L. Marshall, Engendering Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994 p. 4. 18 Milner, Contemporary Cultural Theory, pp. 82-121. 19 ibid. p. 82. 20 Intersubjectivity is a term that is frequently used within the writing associated with cultural theory to define a situation that identifies subject-to-subject as opposed to subject-to-object relations.
18 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT of cultural theory to foreground individual subjectivities. Through a discussion of the writing of monochrome painters, the aim of these chapters is to identify and test the role of the impact of an individual artists’ subjectivity in relation to the development of the evolution and transformation of monochrome painting over the past century.
Cultural specificity
The final key concept to be defined in the introduction is the termcultural specificity. As is the case with the term subjectivity, cultural theory emphasises the discrete character and identity contained within particular individual cultures. Cultural specificity accounts for the variations and differences that occur within communities at different times in history and in different parts of the world. Cultural specificity can also be defined as a concept that contradicts the depersonalising consequences of modernity.21 Monochrome painting has been frequently aligned with Modernism’s bias toward universality. Through an acknowledgement of locality and geographical specificity, discrete cultures (as alternatives to global or international cultures) can be identified in the context of the role that locality has played on the evolution of historical and contemporary monochrome painting.
Chapter nine and the appendix draw together the themes and concepts defined in this chapter. In chapter nine the conclusions of the thesis affirm that cultural theory, as applied by theorists and practitioners of experimental or progressive monochrome painting, holds the potential to situate monochromes in the world of discrete cultures, specific geographical locations and individual subjectivities. In the appendix, the tangible outcomes for the interpretative potential of cultural theory in the context of monochrome painting, subjectivity and cultural theory are synthesised in a discussion involving the studio research.
21 This position constitutes a theoretical platform that has been widely discussed in the writings associated with Postmodernism and cultural theory, for example Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin, 1977.
19 CHAPTER TWO
Methodology and methods
The terms ‘evolution’ and ‘transformation’ are central to the research that has assisted in shaping the logic and structure of this thesis. The termtransformation indicates that monochrome painting has undergone a series of changes and has evolved and adapted to shifting cultural conditions in new and unexpected ways. My initial research focused on the survival, rather than the transformation, of monochrome painting, however, this implied that monochrome painting was embedded in modern or contemporary art and that its ideological basis was perceived to be under threat or contestation. Through suggestions made during academic reviews, a reassessment of this analytical framework has led me to a theoretical position that appraises the continuity and development of this artistic tradition over the (incorrect) perception that it is under threat or in a state of crisis.
My research aims to articulate the way that gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity can be applied to the interpretation of monochrome painting as well as the way that monochrome painters have chosen to represent their individual subjectivities and cultural specificities in unique, unexpected, and previously unacknowledged, ways.
Unlike the more literal portrayal of subjectivity that is frequently employed by artists working in a mimetic way, monochrome painters have been able to represent their particular subjectivities in subtle and complex ways that frequently avoid being literal and can be described as poetic, critical, or philosophical. The notion of ‘estranged vision’22 that is contained in the early theories of Russian formalism has the potential to provide contemporary artists with a way of applying the theory and practice of monochrome painting to the expression and representation of subjectivity and cultural specificity. The application of this method has revealed that monochrome painting contains the potential to be interpreted or created as a palimpsest rather than a blank canvas or a tabula rasa.23 From this perspective, monochrome painting needs to be acknowledged as a site that attracts meaning rather than one that resists or repels it.
A starting point in the development of the research methodology for this thesis was to establish a theoretical paradigm that situates The Pink Monochrome Project within the larger field of research.
22 Or ostranenie, is a term defined by Tzvetan Todorov, an early theorist of Russian formalism. 23 These terms have been used by a number of theorists to examine the way that monochrome painting has been seen to either accumulate or dispel meaning. See Thierry de Duve, Pictorial Nominalism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.
20 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT
This line of investigation was initiated by Francis Colpitt’s essay ‘Systems of Opinion: Abstract Painting Since 1959’ and lead to the formulation of the research question.24 The Pink Monochrome Project develops Frances Colpitt’s culturally inclusive application of the analytical methods of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism to the interpretation of abstract art through cultural theory.
As a culturally inclusive model, ‘Systems of Opinion’ applies the concerns of cultural theory by emphasising the relationship connecting identity and subjectivity to abstraction. Further more, ‘Systems of Opinion’ operates as a theoretical template by examining the way that shifts in the interpretation and production of monochrome painting can be assessed in terms of their representational potential. Although this essay primarily focuses on an analysis of the development of abstract art since the early 1960s, it also contains a selection of divergent positions that connect recent abstract painting to contemporary philosophical thinking. Although Colpitt is the editor of Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century, ‘Systems of Opinion’ is its final and most comprehensive and definitive inclusion. The main arguments contained within this essay are substantiated by additional texts from well known writers, critics and theorists including: Hal Foster, Douglas Crimp, Jeremy Gilbert Rolfe and Donald Kuspit, all of whom are more widely acknowledged as leading figures in the development of cultural theory than as specialist historians of abstract art. Unlike the earlier generations of art historians and critics who claimed to be specialists in the history of abstraction, such as Wilhelm Worringer and Clement Greenberg, my analysis of these more recent writers identifies the substantial gap that separates the production of monochrome painting from its analysis. Since the 1980s, this position seems to have been reversed and the more recent essays by Colpitt and Kuspit, as well as Thierry de Duve and Yve-Alain Bois, indicate that the oppositional relationship that once separated abstraction from representation, and objectivity from subjectivity, has been challenged by several successive generations of contemporary practitioners of abstraction and monochrome painting.
The collection of essays published in Colpitt’s anthology establishes the theoretical foundations of what might be called ‘Postmodern Abstraction’. The provocative title of Colpitt’s essay, ‘Systems of Opinion’, affirms that contemporary abstraction can be simultaneously understood as an analytical method and as a systematic point of view. Colpitt states that abstract art often combines historically determined systematic forms of thinking with personal or subjective interpretations and, according to her schema, abstract art has evolved and developed through the combination of these apparently oppositional paradigms.25 Unlike earlier generations of art historians, Colpitt argues that abstract
24 Frances Colpitt, ‘Systems of Opinion’, Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 153-203. 25 As observed by my thesis co-supervisor, Andrew Christofides, the debate generated between Theo Van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian on the role of intuition in the processes of visual thinking predates, and possibly informs, Colpitt’s commentary.
21 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT art is an alternative form of representational art and is unique because “its endurance suggests that it has the capacity to communicate in ways unavailable to mimetic painting.”26
An important question that develops Colpitt’s argument and substantiates the methodology informing The Pink Monochrome Project is, “What is the potential for monochrome painting to represent individual subjectivities and cultural specificities in ways that diverge from the conventions and limitations contained within pictorial or narrative art?” This question is discussed throughout the thesis in relation to an analysis of artists’ writings and to my studio research.
From this starting point my research methodology has evolved in new and unexpected ways. The initial way that this position has been identified, defined and clarified was by looking at the way that cultural theory directly influenced the production of contemporary monochrome painting since the 1970s, and secondly, how it could also be used as a way of re-reading and reinterpreting historical monochrome painting. As with Postmodernism, cultural theory frequently contains a genealogical perspective that has the potential to identify previously unidentified influences and lineages. In this way The Pink Monochrome Project aims to identify a previously unqualified genealogy as part of its methodology.
Throughout the development of this project, one of the most significant outcomes has been the way that the application of methods has influenced the methodology. Although the inclusion of artists’ writings was envisaged as a component of the research, it became increasingly apparent that historical and contemporary monochrome painters have produced large quantities of original and under-analysed writings. Indeed, a significant anthology could be published that focuses specifically on the writing of monochrome painters. The results of my analysis of these primary research documents are discussed in chapters four and six. Due to the large amount as well as the content of the writing these texts have shaped the direction of the processes, findings and conclusions of the research project.
The conclusions and recommendations of thethesis are that the widespread dissemination of cultural theory has led to a situation that has contributed to the reinvention, rather than the mere survival, of monochrome painting. Additionally, throughout the thesis the interpretation of artists’ writings reveals that although only a small number of the sample artists have been directly influenced by their individual interpretations of cultural theory,27 a larger number of artists have produced paintings that lend themselves to cultural interpretations. This thesis engages with many of the reasons why successive generations of artists have produced monochromes while simultaneously engaging with the limitations that successive generations of writers, particularly
26 Colpitt, ‘Systems of Opinion’ in Abstract Art, p. 153. 27 The writings of artists Marcia Hafif and Matthew Deleget reveal that their monochromes have been influenced by Feminism and Postmodernism respectively.
22 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT during the era of Modernism, placed on the interpretative potential of monochrome painting as discussed in chapter three.
23 CHAPTER THREE
The rise of formalism and the interpretation of historical abstraction and monochrome painting 1910-1970: Wilhelm Worringer, Clive Bell, Herbert Read and Clement Greenberg
This chapter focuses on the theoretical writings of four critics and art historians who shaped the interpretation of abstraction and monochrome painting during the era of Modernism and provides a qualitative counterpoint from which to assess the writings of historical and contemporary practitioners of monochrome painting. The theorists included in this chapter are: Wilhelm Worringer, Clive Bell, Herbert Read and Clement Greenberg. Their writings have been selected for discussion because they represent the main lineages in the development of formalism. In relation to the narrative of this thesis, the critical positions established by these four writers are applied and tested against the work of the six artists: Kazimir Malevich, Valdislav Strzeminski, Yves Klein, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman and Agnes Martin, whose monochromes and writings are discussed in chapter four.
Over the past one hundred years, practitioners of monochrome painting have demonstrated their versatility by developing new and ever changing strategies and responses to a wide variety of social and theoretical positions and by drawing upon these experiences and experiments as part of their practical and theoretical frames of reference. In the context of these processes, monochrome painting can be viewed as an extremely open ended approach to painting that contains the scope and flexibility to adapt, respond and react to the continuously shifting theories, philosophies and ideologies that exist during different times and throughout a wide range of historical and cultural periods.
Throughout the twentieth century, much of the historical and theoretical literature that has attempted to define, quantify and categorise the parameters of monochrome painting has attempted to classify its evolution as a response to prevailing theories. These theoretical positions can be clearly summarised into three distinct phases: the early Modern or spiritual-metaphysical phase that characterizes the interpretation of monochrome painting from approximately 1910 to 1940, the late Modern or formalist phase that continued from 1940 to 1970, and the Postmodern phase that commenced in 1970 and continues to the present. In the context of this discussion, this chapter analyses a selection of literature samples that were written during the first two phases. Chapter five examines the writing of four contemporary writers – Victor Burgin, Yves-Alain Bois,
24 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT
Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt – all of whom have analysed monochrome painting from a distinctly Postmodern perspective.
The origins of the bifurcation that separated abstraction from representational painting during the early years of the twentieth century were first made apparent through the writing of the German art historian Wilhelm Worringer who published Abstraction and Empathy in 1908.28 Worringer’s argument sketched out an oppositional condition that aligned the concept of empathy with pictorial or representational painting and sculpture while linking the concept of abstraction to objectivity.
Worringer defined empathy as the capacity for one person to share another person’s emotions. Although the history of the separation of the mind and the body, as well as the philosophical division of reason and emotion, is beyond the scope of this thesis, it must be noted that the writing of Pascal and Descartes had an obvious influence on Worringer’s theories. As a student of Theodore Lipps, Worringer applied his teacher’s definition of empathy as a process of ‘feeling into’ into his own discussion and interpretation of modern art. For Lipps, empathy also related to the term cognitive understanding and significantly, this concept inspired Sigmund Freud’s definition of the unconscious as well as Edmund Husserl’s theory of Phenomenology, both of whom were of the same generation as Worringer. Cognitive understanding for Lipps involved the human capability for individuals to share the emotional states of others by developing an understanding of others in relation to oneself. As observed by Barbara Marshall, cultural theory holds the potential to apply the concept of empathy to contemporary society in that cultural theorists frequently substitute the word empathy for the term intersubjectivity. Cultural theorists such as Marshall define intersubjectivity as a form representation or signification that “builds on the relationship of subject-to-subject, rather than subject-to-object.”29 This point is significant because it establishes a semantic relationship by linking the words empathy and subjectivity through the development of a theoretical position that can be applied to the definition and interpretation of cultural formations and art historical traditions such as monochrome painting. This idea has also informed the development of the studio component of the research project in that it similarly unites personal expression with a formal working method through the production of monochrome painting.
Throughout Abstraction and Empathy, Worringer states that modern aesthetics has moved from “aesthetic objectivism to aesthetic subjectivism” and that “the work of art holds its own beauty and it is only through our own vital feeling that we project our thoughts into it”.30 Worringer’s romantic, and at times metaphysical, view of the character and definition of empathy led him to conclude that the rise of science and rationalism in the West during the nineteenth century led
28 Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, translated by Michael Bullock, London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967. 29 Barbara L. Marshall, Engendering Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994, p. 97. 30 ibid. p. 96.
25 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT to an eventual decline of empathy as revealed by the increasing tendency towards abstraction. The development of German Expressionism was an attempt by artists to include Worringer’s ideas about the ‘anxieties’ of a post-war industrial urban culture in their paintings and sculptures.31 Worringer conducted a study of African and Melanesian art that, he believed, held the potential to reanimate an empathetic position in modern art and culture. Although a detailed study of the fascination that led many European artists and art historians to develop an interest in so called ‘Primitive and Folk Art’ is outside the scope of this thesis, it must be noted that in the minds of early Modernist theorists of formalism, including Worringer, the concept of primitivism provided artists as far ranging as Picasso to Malevich with visual alternatives to traditional two-point perspective painting and drawing. Worringer believed that the more abstract a work of art became, the less empathy it contained. According to this definition, abstraction contains a limited potential to be able to communicate empathically with the viewer, and although Worringer doesn’t discuss monochrome painting, it could be surmised that monochromes, in his view, would hold the lowest level of ability to transmit empathy.
At almost exactly the same time of the publication of Abstraction and Empathy, Malevich was conducting his first experiments into monochrome painting. Based on an extrapolation of Worringer’s theories monochrome painting must surely be a type of art that is incapable of representing empathy. Worringer laments “abstraction is the urge to alienate oneself from ones individual being”32 and “the counter-pole to the need for empathy appears to us to be the urge to abstraction”.33 Worringer also suggested that empathy was connected to nature and immanence while abstraction was connected to “invisible regularities and transcendence”.34 In this way he saw abstraction to be more closely related to science and mathematics in that these disciplines were an attempt to establish objective rules and laws. The conclusion of his analysis suggests that “abstraction aims for the eternal and it operates beyond the conditions of time, place and individuality”.35 This position proved to be highly influential in thatAbstraction and Empathy is subtitled A Contribution to the Psychology of Style and was based on a doctoral thesis that Worringer submitted in 1906 that remained continuously in print until the 1950s.
As an influential book, Abstraction and Empathy contributed to the codification of the attitudes that European and American art historians maintained and developed in relation to the evolution of formalism throughout the twentieth century. Influenced by the writing of Worringer, successive generations of art theorists including Clive Bell, Herbert Read and Clement Greenberg, developed an interpretative position that excluded identity and subjectivity from art. It was not until the late
31 Worringer argued that abstraction was a byproduct of anxiety. ibid, p. 13. 32 ibid. p. 71. 33 ibid. 34 ibid. p. 73. 35 ibid. p. 204.
26 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT
1960s that writers such as Leo Steinberg attempted to criticise the limitations of the trajectory of formalism and, in particular, the writing of Clement Greenberg:
…it is probably no chance coincidence that the descriptive terms which have dominated American formalist criticism these past fifty years run parallel to the contemporaneous evolution of the Detroit automobile. Its ever-increasing symbiosis of parts – the ingestion of doors, running boards, wheels, fenders, spare tires, signals, etc., in a one-piece fuselage – suggests, with no need for Kant, a similar drift towards synthesizing its design elements.36
Early Western histories of Russian formalism, most notably Camilla Gray’s The Russian Experiment in Art 1863-1922, were highly critical of the position of ‘materialist formalism.’37 Through her writing, Grey made it clear that Constructivists and monochrome painters had the skill and ability for the communication of empathy, “The theory of Constructivism was not only an aesthetic but a philosophy of life”38 and “even when all colour has been eliminated, and form the purist, the white monochrome is not de-humanised.”39 This historical account, as well as the selection of artists’ writings discussed in chapters four and six, highlight the position that there was an ideological schism that developed in the early twentieth century. This schism had the effect of limiting the interpretative scope of theoretical formalism with regard to the practice of monochrome painting until the 1970s.
In 1914 Clive Bell published The Aesthetic Hypothesis which was directly influenced by Worringer’s theories. Worringer’s views on aesthetics were held in such high esteem that, even a generation after Bell, the art historian Herbert Read referred to Worringer as “My esteemed master in the philosophy of art”.40 The guiding principle within Bell’s system of aesthetics was what he referred to as ‘significant form’. Bell aligned this concept to the prioritisation of the formal and compositional elements within an artwork and these elements included colour, line and composition. He stated that to “evoke the emotions of life the artist must use representation”.41 Bell’s position was also confirmed by the writing of Roger Fry and both theorists sought to develop and apply Worringer’s idea, namely that abstract art is incapable of representing subjective experience.
36 Leo Steinberg, ‘Other Criteria’ in Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art, London: Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 79. 37 Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art 1863-1922, London: Thames and Hudson, 1993. 38 ibid. p. 268. 39 ibid. p. 167. 40 Herbert Read, The Philosophy of Modern Art, New York: Horizon Press, 1955. 41 Clive Bell, ‘The Aesthetic Hypothesis’, in Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison (eds.),Modern Art and Modernism, London: Harper and Row, 1984, p. 70.
27 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT
Bell went on to suggest that, “A painter too feeble to create form that provokes more than a little aesthetic emotion will try to eke that little out by suggesting the emotions of life”.42 This implies that even Bell thought that form was important for art for its structural virtues rather than its representational ones. Bell concludes by stating that the “expression of subjectivity is a weakness, a defective sensibility”43 and as a consequence, the quest for an essentialist, immutable and unchangeable definition of aesthetics brings with it the type of logic that confirms the belief that the representation of subjectivity and cultural specificity is outside of the discourse of ‘high art’. This position contributed to a schism that oversaw the separation of art from life and as a theoretical construct and dominant attitude within art theory it was not contested until the 1960s.
By the 1930s theorists such as Herbert Read had placed an even greater emphasis on the dominant role of the formal interpretation of art. Even the definition of art for Read had to be equated with the acknowledgement and acceptance of the importance of form over content. As Read states, “Any general theory of art must begin with this supposition: that man responds to the shape and surface and mass of things present to his senses. It is the arrangement of shape, line and form that lead to a pleasurable sensation or indifference or revulsion”.44 This statement indicates that although the formal properties of art could communicate a universal or generic type of empathy, the communication of a more subjective or individual form of empathy was outside of the scope of art. For Read formal properties and emotional or aesthetic responses to art were also regarded as timeless and, through the skilful use of form, the artist could embrace the eternal values contained within the concepts of beauty and perfection.45
As was the case with Worringer, Read’s theories concerning the importance of form over content were influenced by the writing of Plato, Arthur Schopenhauer46 and Benedetto Croce,47 who in turn came to influence the aesthetic theories of Clement Greenberg. For the most part Read maintained that the representation of subjective sensations in abstraction was both arbitrary and absurd.48 However, even Read conceded that if abstract art is analysed through the lens of Existentialism and phenomenology, “an interesting correlation could thus be made between the development of existential philosophy and abstract art, and certain abstract artists with a philosophical insight have not hesitated to express themselves in the phraseology that recalls Heidegger or Sartre”.49 This comment implies that Read’s definition of abstract art accepted that abstract expressionism
42 ibid. p. 115. 43 ibid. 44 Read, The Philosophy of Modern Art. p. 18. 45 ibid. p. 65. 46 See Henry D. Aiken, The Age of Ideology, New York: Mentor Books, 1956, pp. 98-114. 47 See Michael Bullock, preface to Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, p. ix. 48 Read, The Philosophy of Modern Art, p. 8. 49 ibid. p. 97.
28 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT had the potential to communicate ‘being’ and ‘existence’ but more reductive forms of abstraction, such as monochrome painting, could offer little in the way of subjective expression.
Although the relationship between abstract art, politics and Existentialism was developed through the writing of Harold Rosenberg,50 the doctrine of an increasingly pure strand of formalism came to dominate art history and criticism until the 1960s. An extreme example of this position is to be found in the later writings of Clement Greenberg. One such example is the widely debated and often quoted essay, Modernist Painting, first published in 1961. 51 Controversially, Greenberg states that:
The essence of Modernism lies in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticise the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence…Thereby each art form would be rendered pure and its purity would guarantee its standards of quality as well as its independence.52
For Greenberg the virtues of painting could be found in its limitations as well as its isolation from popular culture. Greenberg’s idea of quality as well as artistic avant-garde status meant that artists were obliged to emphasise the flatness, size, dimensions or shape and support of a painting to the exclusion of everything else.
For many artists involved in the production of abstraction and monochrome painting, these considerations have always been important when making a work of art, however, one ingredient that Greenberg omitted from his theoretical recipe was the importance of the inclusion of non-formal elements such as those relating to reference and content. Debates concerning representation led Greenberg to become entrenched within a position that became increasingly debunked throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In his analysis of the evolution of abstraction, Greenberg almost entirely omitted references to Malevich and saw other artists, including Yves Klein and Ad Reinhard, (both of whom produced monochrome paintings), as too closely linked to the tradition of Dada and the readymade to be considered seriously as contributing influences in the development of modern painting.53 Greenberg’s later writings indicate he believed monochrome painting was a purely conceptual practice rather than a visual form of art.
As the 1960s unfolded, Greenberg developed an increasingly reactionary position in relation to the shift from modern to contemporary art. Did Greenberg’s dedication to an entrenched position indicate that he was actually expressing his own subjectivity? The remarkable thing about
50 Harold Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New, New York: Grove Press, 1961. 51 Clement Greenberg, ‘Modernist Painting’, Art & Literature, no. 4, Spring, 1965, pp. 194-195. 52 ibid. p. 195. 53 Thierry de Duve, Kant after Duchamp, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996, pp. 199-210.
29 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT
Greenberg’s writing is its level of intuition and it seems an odd contradiction that he wouldn’t allow artists from much younger generations than himself to embrace a freedom of expression.
Greenberg’s reaction to monochrome painting is revealing, “I remember that my first reaction to almost monochromatic pictures shown by Rollin Crampton in 1951 at the Peridot Gallery was derision mixed with exasperation”.54 From that time he argued “monochromes became easier to ‘get’ for example Klein and Reinhardt who draw the line between art and non-art”.55
Although much of Greenberg’s derision was directed at Pop, Minimal and Conceptual Art, his formalist template seems to falter when he discusses the work of monochrome painters. Where as he describes “Primary Structures, ABC or Minimal Art” as “furthest-out”56, monochrome painters – such as Yves Klein and Ad Reinhardt – are simply described as ‘far out’: “Reinhardt’s shadowy monochromes are tokens of far-outness, part like a veil to reveal a delicate and very timid sensibility.”57 At this point in his assessment of Reinhardt’s monochromes, Greenberg uses words such as ‘soft’ to project onto the artist’s black paintings a level of personal criticism that attempts to question his masculinity.58 One can only imagine what Greenberg would have to say about the development of contemporary art since the 1970s. The conclusion that can be drawn through a study of Wilhelm Worringer, Clive Bell, Herbert Read and Clement Greenberg is that the confluence of their apparently objective formal theories led to a schism that resulted in the separation of theoretical formalism from the broader interpretation of the practice of monochrome painting.
What makes this debate even more compelling is the situation that arose within the theory and practice of formalism outside of the context of Anglo-American art and culture. As noted by Victor Burgin, whose analysis of formalist aesthetics is discussed in chapter five, Russian formalism did not separate form from content in the same way as it was done in the West. Theorists of Russian formalism, including Pavel Medvedev and Roman Jakobson, developed an integrated theoretical system in the combination of form and content.59 This position also corresponds with the writing of monochrome painters who have frequently affirmed that the formal elements of monochrome painting, such as line, colour and composition, are significant in relation to the way that monochromes have been used to represent and interpret emotions and ideas.60
54 Clement Greenberg, The Collected Essays and Criticism: Modernism with a Vengeance 1957-1969, vol. 4, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 251. 55 ibid. 56 ibid. p. 252. 57 ibid. p. 254. 58 ibid. 59 Victor Erlich, Russian Formalism: History and Doctrine, New York: Moulton Publishers, 1980, p. 174. 60 As discussed in the writing of Malevich. See Kazimir Malevich 1878-1935, edited by Jeanne D’Andrea, The Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1990, p. 170.
30 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT
As a consequence of the positions held by Wilhelm Worringer, Clive Bell, Herbert Read and Clement Greenberg, the practice of monochrome painting faced an extremely high level of criticism, contestation and misunderstanding – possibly more than any other style of modern or contemporary art. The almost wholesale rejection of monochromes from the sequential and evolutionary linear narrative history of Modernism has led to a position where monochromes have been roundly criticised by formalists as being too conceptual while more recently, monochromes have been criticised as being too formal.
The aim of this chapter has been to critically examine the ruptures that are found within narratives and discourses surrounding the critical reception of monochrome painting. In relation to an expanded definition of formalism, the primary concern of the methodology and research question informing this thesis is to qualify the narratives that have shaped the practice and theory of monochrome painting. Through the development of a methodology that foregrounds the representation of subjectivity and cultural specificity through monochrome painting, a detailed study of the practice and writing of a selection of artists who have contributed to the development and transformation of monochromes is included in chapter four. A detailed study of these texts in the context of the writing of contemporary art historians and theorists including Victor Burgin, Yve-Alain Bois, Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt, reveals a much more responsive and less ideologically driven analysis of monochrome painting. As a reaction to the writing of formalist critics, a more sympathetic interpretation of the political and social influences that came to influence the production of artworks, as well as philosophical frames of reference including formalism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Postmodernism and cultural theory, is included in chapters four, five and six.
31 CHAPTER FOUR
Artists’ writings 1910-1970: Kazimir Malevich, Valdislav Strzeminski, Yves Klein, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman and Agnes Martin
As discussed in the previous chapter, there was a clear difference of opinion separating the writings of theorists from the writings of artists with reference to abstraction and monochrome painting throughout much of the twentieth century. In contrast to the theoretical accounts of abstraction that were developed during the era of Modernism by Wilhelm Worringer, Clive Bell, Herbert Read and Clement Greenberg, many artists presented complex arguments that substantiated their individual positions from a clearly personal point of view. With the aim of demonstrating this schism, this chapter interprets the writings of Kazimir Malevich, Valdislav Strzeminski, Yves Klein, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman and Agnes Martin in the context of how cultural interpretations of artists’ writings hold the potential to provide new insights into historical monochrome painting.
This chapter specifically focuses on the way Kazimir Malevich, Valdislav Strzeminski, Yves Klein, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman and Agnes Martin sought to represent their individual subjectivities and cultural specificities through the practice of monochrome painting. The ordering of artists in this chapter is not strictly chronological in terms of the years in which these individuals were born but relates to a period in time when they established a critical position in relation to the depiction of their own individual identities and subjectivities.
Many conventional histories of abstraction and monochrome painting, such as John Golding’s Paths to the Absolute (published as recently as 2000), claim that as an artistic position, abstraction and monochrome painting are notable because they eschew the representation of individual subjectivity and operate as the embodiment of purity, essentialism and universalism.61 Similarly, Rosalind Krauss stated that Malevich’s approach to non-objective art was an attempt to transcend his individual subjectivity and cultural specificity in a quest for the universal by developing an artistic language that is “site-less, or homeless, an absolute loss of individuality and a loss of a sense of place”.62 As a critique of this position, one of the methods that shaped the construction of the narratives contained in this thesis is the collection of artists’ writings that are interpreted as qualitative data samples. Through the discussion and analysis of these samples, an attempt has
61 John Golding, Paths to the Absolute, London: Thames and Hudson, 2000, p. 48. 62 Rosalind Krauss, ‘Sculpture in the Expanded Field’, Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1985, p. 280.
32 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT been made to compare and contrast the writings of artists to the established positions contained within a selection of theoretical writings in chapter three.
Through the analysis of the writings of several generations of monochrome painters from the era of Modernism it is possible to address the way that historical monochrome painters placed a level of importance on the expression of their own individual subjectivities and cultural specificities. For example, aside from the exploration and development of exclusively metaphysical or functionalist pictorial systems, artists such as Malevich, Strzeminski and Reinhardt developed complex and at times contradictory projects that drew upon their own individual self-consciousness, enabling their monochromes to be interpreted as sites of inscription.63 Interpreting artists’ writings as primary texts, this chapter develops a counter-reading that aims to revaluate the purely materialistic aspect of formalism that sought to emphasise objectivity over subjectivity. The methods informing this chapter serve to contrast the theories of Modernist commentators, discussed in chapter three, with the attitudes conveyed through the writings of artists. One of the significant differences separating theoretical and artists’ writings during this era was that while the theorists attempted to develop a broader and overarching position from which to identify ideological patterns and cultural formations, the writings of artists tend to be much less systematic and far more personal. A cursory study of the style of artists’ writings reveals that they frequently employ anecdotes and are written using an aphoristic style. As primary material, much of the artists’ writings remain under-analysed. Due to their personal character, they have proven to be highly useful, especially when interpreted from the critical perspectives of cultural theory.
Kazimir Malevich
It has been frequently repeated by conventional histories of abstraction64 that Malevich attempted to divest his paintings of external references. However, a close study of his writings, as well as his monochromes, reveals that the paintings contain concealed layers of meaning that can be deconstructed in relation to how he represented his own subjectivity and cultural identity. A deconstructive analysis of Malevich’s work reveals that many of his non-objective paintings and monochromes attempted to develop a language that depicts political issues and spiritual concerns as well as ideas relating to the artist’s own individual subjectivity and cultural specificity. It is out of this trajectory that the issues and themes discussed in the studio component of this research project are developed in relation to the themes of colour and subjectivity as well as monochromes and everyday life.
For Malevich, the goal of the artist was to “free our art from vulgar subject matter and teach our consciousness to see everything in nature not as real forms and objects, but as material masses
63 Michael Corris, Ad Reinhardt, London: Reaktion Books, 2008, p. 139. 64 Roger Brunyate, Concise Encyclopedia of Modern Art, Glasgow: Collins, 1972, p. 7.
33 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT from which forms must be made.”65 This quote indicates that Malevich was not attempting to be anti-representational but was genuinely interested in developing a position that would enable him to establish an alternative system from which he could interpret the world. Malevich also states that although he believed the evolution of art was inevitably heading toward increasing abstraction, “…evolution and revolution in art have the same aim, which is to arrive at a unity of creation – the formation of signs instead of the replication of nature.”66 Through a cultural interpretation of this quote, Malevich sounds like a Postmodernist in that he uses the word ‘signs’ to indicate that an innovative system of representation needs to be developed in order to translate the process of seeing into a form of reading. In the context of Malevich’s ‘Black Square’ (which is actually an irregular square or a trapezoid), Briony Fer rejects the notion of the artists’ singular commitment to either ‘universalist principles’ or the exploration of ‘purity of form’ to be the only pictorial beliefs that informed his concept of monochrome painting. Theorists such as Fer as well as John C. Welchman67 have analysed the cracked and gritty surfaces and the double titles of many of Malevich’s paintings to reveal that the production of his paintings are more concerned with processes over concepts, and nominalism over formalism. Fer observes that “their rough hand-made quality uses texture, colour and form as an ‘intuitive’ rather than ‘systematic’ device.68
Malevich’s own writings contradict the exclusively transcendental and metaphysical interpretations of Constructivism by claiming that Suprematism is defined as “the supremacy of communicating pure feeling in creative art.”69 This quote reveals that Malevich developed an innovative or alternative form of representation through his interpretation and definition of subjectivity and experience. In many ways Malevich’s attitude to art making resembles a central position contained within the writings of his contemporary Edmund Husserl.70 Husserl’s definition of the role and function of Phenomenology was to develop a “concrete analysis of the structures of consciousness and their relation to experience and to the knowledge of that which is given in experience.”71
Obvious comparisons can be made linking both Malevich and Husserl’s understanding of consciousness. Parallels may also be made linking Wilhelm Worringer’s definition of the term empathy to Malevich’s use of the term pure feeling. Similarities in the definition and interpretation of the terms Suprematism, Phenomenology and empathy are based on the definition of these concepts that foregrounds the belief that individuals have an ability that enables them to share
65 Kazimir Malevich quoted in Paul Crowther, The Language of Twentieth-Century Art: A Conceptual History, New York: Yale University Press, 1997, p. 77. 66 ibid. p. 41. 67 John C. Welchman, Invisible Colours: A Visual History of Titles, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997, p. 34. 68 Briony Fer, On Abstract Art, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997, p.26. 69 See catalogue essay by Jacqueline Strecker in Erich Buchholz: The Restless Avant-Gardist, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2000, p. 15. 70 Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was a pioneering theorist of Phenomenology. 71 Christopher Macann, Four Phenomenological Philosophers, London and New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 4.
34 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT and represent subjective experiences. From the position of cultural theory, the era of Modernism is characterised by a network of theoretical positions relating to the definition of human consciousness connecting a range of activities as diverse as monochrome painting and Phenomenology.
Malevich demonstrated his theoretical position through the installation of the work Black Square (Fig. 1) that was included in the 1,10 Last Futurist Exhibition in 1915. Black Square consists of a square painted field set on a white ground. The shape of the canvas defines the painting’s composition and was chosen deliberately because it affirms Malevich’s theory that art should avoid the conventions of representation by not conforming to the portrait or landscape format.72 By 1915 Malevich had already absorbed and reacted against what he saw to be the limitations of Cubism and Futurism. With the invention of Suprematism, Malevich argued that the use of the square and the application of a single colour had finally replaced all of the associations of pictorial art.
Fig 1: Kazimir Malevich, Black Square. 1915. Oil on canvas (53.5 x 53.5 cm). The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia.
72 Recent x-rays of Black Square reveal that beneath several layers of paint are the traces of an earlier geometric abstract painting. The cracked surface or craquelure provides this work with additional layers of subjectivity and meaning. See Kazimir Malevich 1878-1935, edited by Jeanne D’Andrea, The Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1990, p. 194.
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The installation of Black Square in 0,10, 73 or The Last Futurist Exhibition, was unusual because it spaned the corner of the room and hung directly beneath the building’s ornate nineteenth century architectural cornice. Significantly, the placement of the black monochrome deliberately provoked a situation suggesting that even a highly austere single-colour painting can be representational due to its unconventional installation. Through the installation of this small black monochrome cultural associations alluding to spirituality in general, and the religion of the Russian Orthodox Church in particular, were evoked. As noted by historians of the Russian Orthodox Church, traditionally devout people hung icons in the corner of the rooms of their homes in the same way that Malevich had installed this particular monochrome.74 This approach to making and exhibiting art reveals that Malevich was actively representing his own subjectivity and cultural specificity in the manner in which this particular work was hung.
At approximately the same time that Malevich was producing his reductive paintings, Marcel Duchamp was achieving a similarly radical critique of authorship and originality with his exploration of readymades. The significant difference between readymades and monochromes is that the readymade attempted to develop a position that focussed on the critique of authorship whereas the monochrome aimed to develop a new visual system for the exploration, interpretation and representation of authorship.75 Malevich’s writings clearly state that monochrome painting was a highly romantic activity that could be equated with writing poetry or composing music. This position has been extended through the mythology that surrounds the theorisation of Malevich’s work and as a consequence, the art making process associated with monochrome painting carries with it many layers of accumulated references and meaning that have been used by curators, historians and theorists to mythologise his individual subjectivity and cultural specificity.
Valdislav Strzeminski
Inspired by contemporaneous developments in Russia, Valdislav Strzeminski developed a culturally-specific form of Suprematism in Poland called Unism. Strzeminski’s development of Malevich’s concept of monochromes was just one of the European avant-garde movements from the inter-war period that proved to be unique, mainly because of its cultural and geographical specificity. In addition to the regional character and cultural differences contained within avant- garde movements such as Suprematism, Unism and de Stijl, it was also the artists themselves who were responsible for drafting manifestos that gave these movements their own character. As an avant-garde movement, Unism was dedicated to the implementation of revolutionary
73 The Last Futurist Exhibition or 0,10 introduced Suprematism and opened in Petrograd, Russia, on 19 December 1915. 74 Doris Wild, Holy Icons: In the Religious Art of the Eastern Church, Berne, Switzerland: Hallaway Ltd. Publishers, 1970, p. 6. 75 In his book Pictorial Nominalism, Thierry de Duve discusses this concept arguing that Duchamp’s readymades were entirely an act of nominalism whereas Malevich’s monochromes combined the concept of nominalism with existentialism. de Duve, Pictorial Nominalism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991, p. 157.
36 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT social and aesthetic changes and to the rejection and substitution of historical notions of artistic representation. By emphasising a monochromes’ faktura or texture, Unism aimed to create an aesthetic experience that developed a union between art and everyday life.76 As observed by Paulina Kurc-Maj and Jaroslaw Lubick, Strzeminski’s development of a formally and culturally unified system was based on the idea that monochrome painting has the potential to “re-define society”. The curatorial rationale of the recent retrospective exhibition Afterimages of Life77 at the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz, Poland emphasises the idea that the Strzeminski’s involvement in painting, sculpture, architecture and design were guided by personal, cultural and pictorial systems that enabled the artist to develop connections between art and life.
As frequently is the case within the writings of many early practitioners of monochrome painting, Strzeminski’s theories were at times contradictory. For example, in one section of his manifesto he states that the artist’s position could be identified as that of “an individual committed to the expression of the self ”78 whereas he then goes on to say that the aim of painting was to “eradicate all traces of the arbitrary.”79 These unresolved contradictions reveal an apparent quest for purity that frequently led many of the early practitioners of monochrome painting to accidentally discover that the more reductive an artwork became the more open the work was to all forms of interpretation, including those relating to an artist’s subjectivity.80 Before abandoning monochrome painting for a return to mimetic art, Strzeminski realised that the central problem of Unism was its inability to avoid the depiction of cultural associations.
76 Yve-Alain Bois, Painting as Model, Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1990, p. 146. 77 ‘Wladyslaw Strzeminski: Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz’, Undo Net, http://www.undo.net/it/mostra/111434, 2010 (accessed 14 December, 2010). 78 Maria Gough, The Artist as Producer: Russian Constructivism in Revolution, Berkley: University of California Press, 2005, p. 8. 79 Bois’ definition of the arbitrary referred to everything that was outside of the control, or beyond the intent, of the artist. Bois, Painting as Model, p. 143. 80 This seemingly negative situation was later exploited by practitioners of Minimalism who focused on an artwork’s ability to be arbitrary, or in other words, to respond to its context.
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Fig 2: Valdislav Strzeminski, Unist Composition II. 1931. Oil on canvas (73 x 54 cm). Museum Sztuki, Lodz, Poland.
Three decades after the demise of the European avant-garde, a new generation of younger artists in the United States (including Robert Morris, Donald Judd and Sol Le Witt) explored this paradox with the establishment of Minimalism. The aim of Minimalism, with regard to representation, was to replace the issues relating to ‘content’ with those relating to ‘context’.context’.. In this way, these artists converted the ‘arbitrary’ and the ‘accidental’ inclusions in art into an innovative critical position that has been referred to as “The Concept of Presence.”81 In this way, monochrome painting establishes a situation emphasising the relationship between an artworks’ content in relation to its context, an idea that serves to animate the role of interpretation over production.
Yves Klein
After the Second World War, monochrome painting flourished. One of the most outstanding practitioners of single-colour painting in Europe during the years immediately following the War was Yves Klein. The substantive connection between Klein’s highly individual experiments in monochrome painting and philosophy, namely Existentialism and Phenomenology, has been firmly established since the 1960s.82 As discussed by the artist’s close friend, fellow artist and biographer, Pierre Restany, Klein derived much of his inspiration from two late phenomenological philosophers namely Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gaston Bachelard.83 Through the influences of
81 Frances Colpitt, Minimal Art, The Critical Position, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990, p. 67. 82 Pierre Restany, Yves Klein, New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1982, p. 23. 83 Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) developed a form of Phenomenology based on perception while Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) applied the philosophy of Phenomenology to the interpretation of reason, emotion, poetry, and dreams, as well as objects and physical spaces. Bachelard’s 1938 publication, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, influenced the artistic development of Yves Klein. ibid.
38 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT these two French philosophers, Klein’s monochromes are frequently interpreted as the embodiment of a philosophy that places a strong emphasis on the valorisation of humanistic principles including subjectivity and free will.84 In relation to colour theory, Klein states that “blue embodies the spiritual, pink life and gold the absolute.”85 This statement indicates that the use of the colour pink in the context of monochrome painting has the potential to provide a highly reductive form of art with the ability to represent subjective experiences, namely eroticism, sensuality, emotion and love. It is also important to note that Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism were directly influenced by Existentialism and Phenomenology and this obvious connection provides insights into Klein’s writings with regard to the way that cultural theory can be used to discuss and interpret his monochromes. From an economic perspective, as argued in the introduction to this thesis, with the triumph of capitalism after the Second World War, commercialism and consumerism boomed. Through these economic principles, commodities and luxury goods, many of which contained the colour pink, became part of the fabric of the American influence over European life. From this perspective, the first generation of pink monochromes, specifically through the experiments of Yves Klein, evolved.
Klein’s writings indicate that in contrast to the blue and gold monochromes, the rose monochromes did not refer to metaphysical concerns such as ‘the void’ but were an attempt to make a significant connection linking “the immaterial and the material”.86 When viewed from this perspective, pink monochromes are an attempt to complicate the intentions of the blue and gold monochromes by developing a counter-point connecting the concept of the void to more earthly or immanent and humanistic concerns. This process also functions by creating an optical and perceptual effect on the viewer that parallels Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s definition of The Phenomenology of Perception.87 As discussed throughout Restany’s book, Merleau-Ponty’s description of the relationship between transcendental phenomenology and ontological phenomenology influenced Klein’s writings as well as his approach to monochrome painting. For Merleau-Ponty, consciousness consists of individual human responses to the world, including reflection, interpretation, meaning, sensation, association and importantly, subjectivity.
Viewers of Klein’s monochromes have made revealing observations in relation to the connection between the effects of colour on perception and subjectivity, remarking that, even when two paintings exactly the same size are installed next to each other, the blue monochromes always appear larger than the pink monochromes. For example, Klein’s Rose Monochrome (Fig 3), dating
84 Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, (eds.), Art in Theory 1900-1990, Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishers, 1992, p. 587. 85 Restany, Yves Klein, p. 146. 86 ibid. p. 7. 87 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1968, p. 4.
39 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT from 1961.88 This subjective response reveals that, for many individuals, blue is perceived to be an expansive colour related to intellectual and perceptual sensations and the infinite (and is therefore frequently associated with the sea, sky and space) whereas rose or pink is a colour associated with smaller objects, including parts of the body (and is therefore associated with interiority and subjectivity).89
In addition to Klein’s special emphasis on the language of colour, he also developed a deeply personal, and at times idiosyncratic, artistic system. Although this system has frequently been interpreted as having an exclusively transcendental or metaphysical character, it also combines concepts relating to the ontological and the immanent in innovative and contradictory ways. Klein’s own writing demonstrates this situation when he states “monochromes are the last vestige of physical art prior to its transfer to the immaterial.”90 For Klein, monochrome painting, and rose monochromes in particular, have the ability to build bridges between the immanent and the transcendental as well as the formal and the conceptual-phenomenological worlds. Although Klein was fascinated by the definition of the artist as an individual who holds the potential to be a mediator of transcendence, he was equally interested in the way that art could also represent human consciousness.
Klein’s rose monochromes have been designated a special place within the broader context of his artistic practice because they were seen to have the ability to evoke what the phenomenological philosophers refer to as a way of “being in the world”.91 Rose was, for Klein, his elan vital and he believed that its use held the potential to represent chromatically the emotional love and passion that he had for his maternal aunt, Rose.92 Although Klein never studied art formally, his parents and aunt were artists who inspired his entry into art. Biographical histories of Klein’s work indicate that his development towards the almost exclusive use of International Klein Blue or IKB93 was evolutionary and that other colours such as orange, red, yellow and pink were superseded as his practice matured. However, Klein was producing pink monochromes and sculptural reliefs until the time of his death in 1962.
88 As observed by Zane Dreyer who assisted with the installation of the Yves Klein retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in 1997. Interviewed by Christopher Dean, 12 September 2006. 89 Karl Schawelka, ‘Showing Pink: Biological Aspects of the Colour Pink’ in Barbara Nemitz (ed.), Pink: The Exposed Colour in Contemporary Art and Culture, Ostfilden-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2006, p. 44. 90 ibid. p. 146. This quote formed part of Klein’s lecture ‘The Evolution of Art towards the Immaterial’ delivered at the Sorbonne on June 3, 1959. 91 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Boston: Beacon Press, 1994, p. 5. 92 Hannah Weitemeier, Yves Klein 1928-1962: International Klein Blue, Cologne: Taschen, 1995, p. 7. 93 Using synthetic ultramarine pigments, Yves Klein developed the colour International Klein Blue or IKB to depict the immaterial. ibid. p. 19.
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Fig 3: Yves Klein, Rose Monochrome. 1961. Pigment on canvas (75 x 48.5 cm). Private collection, Paris.
Similarly, art historian Thomas McEviley has noted that Klein’s use of a wide range of colours and objects related to his desire to overcome the dualisms that had polarised rationality and intuition throughout the history of art and philosophy in the West.94 Historically, Klein’s pink monochromes have been perceived as being less important that his blue or gold monochromes. Rather than being the quintessence of Klein’s monochrome project, it needs to be argued that, in light of the shifting intellectual and cultural climate since the late 1960s, the colour pink is being revaluated as a highly significant chromatic signifier of Postmodernism because of the many ideas underpinning the interconnected positions and concerns within this paradigm that emphasise issues such as interiority, subjectivity and difference. This issue is a salient feature of many of the writings of the current generation of colour theorists, including John Gage, David Batchelor and Barbara Nemitz. It forms the basis of the contemporary theoretical revaluation of pink in chapter seven.
94 ibid. p. 19.
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Klein’s interpretation of Bachelard’s writings, specifically The Poetics of Space, also needs to be discussed in relation to his reflection on and depiction of subjectivity and cultural specificity.95 Klein was influenced by Bachelard’s discussion and definition of experience, intimacy, imagination and reverie, and he applied these definitions to his own artistic response to the aesthetics of formalism and the concept of materialism. By combining materials such as sand and sea sponges with saturated or opaque pigments used to build up the surfaces of his monochrome paintings, Klein was able to connect the terrestrial with the transcendental. This issue was reinforced through the use of what Klein and his close friend and fellow monochrome painter, Arman, referred to as accumulations.96 For both Klein and Arman many of the accumulated natural objects that they embalmed within the surfaces of their monochrome paintings were derived from the objects that they collected during their trips to the sea. Arman’s studio was located in Nice and since childhood both he and Klein had spent their summers swimming in the blue waters of the Mediterranean. By referring to these found objects as accumulations, the link between phenomenology, monochrome painting, subjectivity and regional specificity is emphasised. Confirming this position through an artistic technique, most of Klein’s paintings have idiosyncratically curved corners. This physical characteristic has the effect of converting the content of a painting from what most viewers recognise as an image into an object by breaking away from the tradition of the neat window-like frame. By experiencing real objects in space, the viewer has the potential to experience Klein’s monochromes in a very different way than being limited to a two-dimensional image.
As is the case with many monochrome painters, Klein was a prolific writer and his exploration of the connection between sensitivity and subjectivity is what links his theories to the writings of earlier monochrome painters such as Malevich, who frequently used the term “pure feeling”.97 Klein claimed to be the true inventor of monochrome painting and he maintained that Malevich’s monochromatic squares, and Strezminski’s textured relief monochromes, were only prototypes of his own more expansive project. Although Klein often wrote about art as being a combination of sorcery and alchemy, it is the existence of his under-theorised pink monochromes that reveals more than a passing interest in what he called “mystical eroticism”.98 The transcript of Klein’s 1959 Sorbonne lecture clarifies his interest in the way that monochrome painting holds the potential to simultaneously represent existence and subjectivity, “…for me painting today no longer relates to the eye; it relates to the only thing that does not belong to us: our lives.”99 Ideas such as this demonstrate that Klein was attempting to establish a direct connection between art and life. A deconstructive analysis of the thematic issues contained within Klein’s writings indicate that he
95 Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, p. 6. 96 Donald Kuspit, Arman: Monochrome Accumulations 1986-1989, Stockholm: A. H. Grafik, 1990, p. 12. 97 Kazimir Malevich 1878-1935, edited by Jeanne D’Andrea, p. 170. 98 ibid. p. 49. 99 ibid. p. 7.
42 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT was fascinated by the potential for monochrome painting to act as a conduit for the representation of subjectivity through a highly personal interpretation of Phenomenology.
Ad Reinhardt
In New York, Ad Reinhardt was producing his own version of monochrome painting at approximately the same time that Klein was producing his. As is the case with Klein’s monochromes, Reinhardt’s paintings have been widely interpreted as a decisive point in the history of modern art. Reinhardt and Klein’s monochromes share an attitude that challenges Modernism’s linear and progressive evolutionary narrative. Their works can be classified as examples of non-progressive modernity or, more accurately, as I have observed, Modernism in suspended animation. Paradoxically, Klein and Reinhardt’s role in this apparent end point or aporia that took place at a time, led to the transformation of monochrome painting and it was their individual experiments that led to the development of the emergence of Minimalism and Conceptual Art during the mid-1960s.
Reinhardt’s, and to a lesser extent Klein’s, contribution to the development of the early phase of Postmodern monochromes emerged out of the negative criticism that referred to monochromes as uninteresting because they were perceived to be devoid of content.100 As late as 1998, Michael Fried stated:
Until now I have never been attracted to the monochrome, which inevitably struck me, in the many instances of it that I have come across over the years, as artistically inert, or to use the language of Art and Objecthood, as merely depressingly literal.101
Literal interpretations of the writings of Reinhardt assert that his monochromes are the embodiment of universal principles including purity, unity and timelessness.102 A critical reading of Reinhardt’s writings in relation to the works themselves reveal that a wide variety of alternative arguments can be applied to the interpretation of his works. As a document, Reinhardt’s collection of essays, posthumously published as Art as Art, confirms this complex and at times self-critical position.103 The wide range of associations, as well as the polemical language, that Reinhardt employed to discuss his monochromes have proved to be an art historical anomaly in that they have simultaneously provoked an enduring, and at times furious, debate. A revaluation of Reinhardt’s artistic intent, as well as the interpretations surrounding his paintings and writings, confirms that
100 Clement Greenberg, The Collected Essays and Criticism: Modernism with a Vengeance 1957-1969, vol. 4, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 252. 101 Michael Fried, ‘Joseph Marioni, The Painter,’Artforum , September 1998, http://www.tiac.net/~marioni/reviews. html, accessed 23 May 2008. 102 See catalogue essay by Gudrun Inboden and Thomas Kellein, Ad Reinhardt, Stuttgart Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany, 1998, p. 10. 103 Barbara Rose (ed.), Art as Art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt, New York: Viking Press, 1975.
43 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT his project operates as a palimpsest rather than a tabula rasa, in other words, as a layered sequence of narratives rather than as an empty totalising position.
In relation to these perspectives, Reinhardt’s writings depict and interpret his individual subjectivity and cultural specificity; they don’t merely exist as an explanation of his paintings but coexist with them as a part of a larger project. The separation of his black monochromes from his aphoristic writings has the potential to generate a closed, and at times uncritical, interpretation of the personal and cultural issues he chose to engage.
Fig 4: Ad Reinhardt, Monochrome. 1963. Oil on canvas (152.5 x 152.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
A literal interpretation of Reinhardt’s writing, for example those contained in Art as Art, indicate that his aim was to conclusively separate art from life. One of the earlier aphorisms contained within this posthumous selection of writings is that “the one thing to say about art and life is that art is art and life is life, that art is not life and life is not art”.104 He also makes the comment “art needs no justification with realism or naturalism, regionalism or individualism, socialism or
104 Harrison & Wood, Art in Theory 1900-1990, p. 807.
44 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT mysticism or with any other ideas”.105 In an attempt to avoid any confusion or ambiguity, he clearly states that:
…the one object of fifty years of abstract art is to present art-as-art and nothing else, to make it into the one thing it is only, separating and defining it more and more, making it purer and emptier, more absolute and more exclusive-non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective.106
Perhaps it would be foolish to attempt to prove that there is more to these words other than what they claim at face value, as conventionally formal interpretations of Reinhardt’s writings have done.107 However, by embracing the ambiguous, provocative and at times ironic, layers of meaning contained within these quotes, and by avoiding a literal interpretation of Reinhardt’s writings, authors such as Joseph Kosuth, Barbara Rose, Victor Burgin, Carter Ratcliff, Thierry de Duve and Yves-Alain Bois have developed new models that have valorised and expanded upon Reinhardt’s opinions. The significance of these varied interpretations of Reinhardt’s aphorisms in turn became an established corpus of theoretical writing that shaped Postmodern art history and criticism by analysing and expanding upon Reinhardt’s opinions conceptually, psychologically and culturally.
One of the most compelling interpretations of Reinhardt’s creative output has been presented by Carter Ratcliff who maintained that Reinhardt was a “dandy” because he expressed his subjective opinions by pretending to remain aloof from them.108 By making reference to Baudelaire, and by referring to his concept and definition of the dandy (an urban dweller with overly refined tastes who is obsessed with style, cultivating an anti-utilitarian outlook, and known for his witticisms)109 Ratcliff neatly defines Reinhardt’s project. Aside from Reinhardt, Ratcliff suggests that other monochrome painters including Kazimir Malevich and Robert Ryman are also modern examples of “the Baudelairean dandy who is a recent ancestor of the twentieth century avant-gardist”.110 This observation is confirmed by Barbara Rose’s description of Reinhardt when she makes the comment, “Reinhardt’s paintings are among the last indigestible manifestations of the traditional avant-garde”.111 Reinhardt’s posturing reaches its apotheosis with the statement, “Art needs no justification with ‘regionalism’ or ‘individualism.’”112
105 ibid. p. 806. 106 ibid. 107 Greenberg, The Collected Essays and Criticism, p. 254. 108 Carter Ratcliff, ‘Dandyism and Abstraction in a Universe Defined by Newton’, Artforum, December 1988, pp. 82-89. 109 ibid. p. 82. 110 ibid. 111 Rose, Art as Art, p. 51. 112 ibid. p. 53.
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Ratcliff ’s argument arrives at its logical conclusion when he compares Reinhardt to Whistler. For many theorists of abstraction, James McNeill Whistler’s painting, Nocturne, 1877, was the world’s first abstract monochrome painting. Nocturne was significant because it was painted in three hours and it challenged the very definition of painting as an acceptable and valid form of art. Ratcliff goes on to say that through their collective blankness, refinement, inertia and resistance, monochrome painters such as Malevich had the bravura of a dandy, and possibly the commitment and faith of a saint, as well as the foresight of a genius. Qualities inherited by Klein, Reinhardt and later Robert Ryman.113 This discussion can be taken a step further by examining Reinhardt’s Twelve Rules for a New Academy.114 Rule number four states:
It is not right for artists to act as if ‘abstraction’ and ‘representation’ do not make any difference. Clive Bell’s sentence, forty-seven years ago, that ‘every sacrifice made to representation is something stolen from art’, and who paints ‘abstract-expressionist’ flames, girders, grasses, and sunsets, should be apprehended for fencing hot merchandise. Artists who portray naked old ladies, undressed boys, beauties (Marilyn Monroe), and beasts should be put into solitary.115
In the context of the art-world of the 1960s, this acerbic quote resembles Gustav Flaubert’s critique of what he called “received opinion”,116 and in this manner, Reinhardt’s critique of contemporary art can be viewed as a conceptual strategy linking his paintings and writings to his desire to critically represent his subjectivity and his world. Michael Corris expands upon this issue by asking the question “can we take on face value the ‘purist’, ‘transcendental’ and allegedly monkish- quality of Reinhardt’s paintings?”117 Corris argues that the philosophical position informing Reinhardt’s exploration of the monochrome relates specifically to his own personal eccentricities as an ‘inconsolable polymath’.118 From this interpretation it is obvious that Reinhardt was drawn to monochrome painting because he saw it as a singular device onto which he could project his complex ideas about art.
The reappraisal of the writings of successive generations of monochrome painters is one of the most remarkable features of the practice of monochrome painting and has been a way for successive generations to build onto the theories and practices of earlier generations. At times
113 Ratcliff, ‘Dandyism and Abstraction’, p. 87. 114 Reinhardt, ‘Twelve Rules for a New Academy’ in Rose, Art as Art. p. 162. 115 ibid. p. 162. 116 Flaubert’s concept of received opinion is an examination of the way that manners, manners,social social conventions and consensus are duplicated and disseminated by individuals in any given society without being treated critically. Reinhardt enjoyed reading Flaubert and Baudelaire and this is borne out through the attitudes informing his writing. See Ad Reinhardt, Inboden and Kellein, p. 21. 117 Corris, Ad Reinhardt, p. 131. 118 ibid. p. 126.
46 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT the relationship between successive generations of monochrome painters tends to be critical – as is the case with Klein’s relationship to Malevich119 – while at other times it tends to be more constructive – as indicated by Robert Ryman’s relationship to Reinhardt. This inter-generational dialogue has had the effect of enhancing the personal character of monochrome painting through the establishment of an alternative visual system of communication.
Robert Ryman
The late 1950s was a time when monochrome painting flourished particularly in Europe and the United States. At this time in New York City, Reinhardt started producing his black monochromes while Ryman commenced work on his white monochromes. Although Reinhardt was a generation older than Ryman, the younger artist treated the work of the older artist as a point of departure. As with Reinhardt, Ryman believed that artists should establish their own set of rules to work within. Ryman’s rules related directly to the paintings themselves and although he was not as prolific with regard to his writings as Reinhardt, his set of rules indicate that he was interested in the examination and articulation of the issues of concept and context over content. Ryman’s rules take the form of a series of questions, as follows, “How is a painting made? What materials are they made of? How are they installed in gallery and museum spaces? How are the works to be experienced?”120 Ryman’s writings form an integral part of his practice and are linked to the paintings through the development of contexts. Rather than embracing Reinhardt’s art-as-art position, Ryman can be seen to have adopted a position more closely connected to the theme of life-as-art.
Ryman was fascinated by the work of Malevich but rather than attempting to criticise the earlier artist’s white monochromes as Klein did, Ryman seized upon the opportunity to build upon Malevich’s artistic legacy. As with Malevich, Ryman was dedicated to producing square rather than rectangular or shaped paintings, the shape that many monochrome painters believed to be the best format for minimal and reductive art, as well as monochrome painting, because it avoids making references to the genres of landscape or portrait painting. Through the process of self- conscious art historical appropriation, Ryman’s work has been considered to be representative of the first generation of Postmodern monochrome painting. This position is confirmed through the interpretation of Yve-Alain Bois “Although he is claimed by some as a Postmodernist, I would say he is the guardian of the tomb of modernist painting.”121 This attitude is confirmed by his exclusive use of the colour white that was employed to comment on the ideology of the apparently neutral
119 Incorrectly, Klein claimed that he was the artist to invent monochrome painting. See Weitemeier, Yves Klein 1928- 1962, p. 76. 120 See catalogue essay by Charles Wylie in Robert Ryman, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, 2006. Published by Yale University Press, New Haven and London. 121 Bois, Painting as Model, p. 232.
47 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT white cube that become part of the language of Minimalism in relation to the identification of the apparently neutral ideology of the gallery space during the 1960s and 1970s.122
Throughout the history of monochrome painting,many practitioners who worked to produce monochromes were committed, for specific reasons, to the use of a particular colour. As Ryman’s writings reveal, he commenced his painting practice with a specific interest in white that can be seen to relate directly to the exploration of his own individual subjectivity. Some of Ryman’s writings develop a connection with his use of white both formally and personally, “White has a tendency to make things visible. With white, you can see more of a nuance; you can see more.”123 Verifying Ryman’s interest in white is his interest in treating his paintings as three-dimensional wall mounted objects, thus providing the paintings with a tangible sense of objecthood and conveying a heightened sense of physical presence to the viewer.
Ryman considers his attitude to art making as being deeply personal, “Years ago I read a lot of books that related to existentialism.”124 Ryman’s reference to Existentialism demonstrates that, as was the case with Klein, his monochromes are informed by attitudes shaped by his interpretation of existential philosophy, in particular, the emphasises that Existentialism places on the existence of individual free will and the notion of self-determinacy. Ryman’s attitude toward Existentialism is borne out by his comment, “When I arrived in New York City I didn’t know a single painter. All of my friends were musicians. Besides I was very shy. I started using white because I saw it to be a shy colour.”125 This statement demonstrates that for Ryman his almost exclusive use of white relates directly to the highly personal relationship that he has developed with a personal symbolism that he attached to a particular colour.
122 Brian O’Dougherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, Santa Monica: The Lapis Press, 1986. 123 ‘Robert Ryman’, Art:21, video recording, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), USA, http://www.pbs.org/art21/ artists/ryman/index.html, 2007, (accessed 20 April 20, 2007). 124 ibid. 125 Peter Blum, DU Magazine, republished in Robert Ryman: Works on Paper 1957-1964, Peter Blum Gallery, New York, 2004. Published by Peter Blum Edition, New York.
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Fig 5: Robert Ryman, Monochrome. 1965. Oil on canvas (45.5 x 47.5 cm). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco.
For Ryman, the logic of the gallery space as a framing device was an important starting point for the production of his white monochromes. Ryman’s treatment of his paintings as objects, rather than two-dimensional surfaces, is one of the key issues that separate his practice from that of Ad Reinhardt, who treated his monochromes as purely two-dimensional surfaces, and Donald Judd, who became more interested in producing free standing sculptural forms.126 Ryman’s monochromes are closely linked to the objectives of Constructivism in that his work prioritises the materials and process from which a painting is constructed. This is demonstrated in the way that his paintings place an emphasis on the treatment of surface, texture and gesture – in other
126 Donald Judd, Complete Writings 1959-1975, New York: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design with New York University Press, 2005, p. 37.
49 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT words, the development of faktura – that through an artworks fabrication serves to reveal traces of the artist’s subjectivity. 127
Areas of unpainted canvas or linen also form part of Ryman’s composition and these areas reveal the structural support of the work. Pencil lines and traces derived from the fabrication and production of a painting contribute to the presence and preservation of the process involved in the manufacture of individual works. Through this approach to painting Ryman states, “my work is very intuitive.”128 In addition to these physical characteristics, many of Ryman’s white monochromes contain numbers that act as titles and referencing systems for individual paintings and are encrypted on their surfaces. Other works contain Ryman’s initials, “I often use my name as a compositional device.”129 Rather than producing unrelated and isolated paintings, Ryman’s use of serial imagery allows him to generate a system emphasising the theme of repetition and difference. By carefully considering the epistemological differences between paintings as objects and pictures as a form of representational imagery Ryman’s working method has the effect of providing each work with a similar yet uniquely distinct individual character.
Many of Ryman’s works are installed using fasteners and brackets, objects that are commonly used by museum preparators to attach paintings to the gallery wall. Revealing the connection between the paintings themselves, and the mechanisms from which they are constructed and installed, has the effect of providing the works with an architectonic character in that the entire exhibition can be seen as a single installation rather than an unrelated suite of isolated paintings. Monochrome painters such as Ryman place a careful and particular emphasis on the way that his paintings are presented to a viewer. Through this process the careful installation of individual works gives rise to a series of relationships and associations. Ryman’s installations resemble Malevich’s salon-style display of monochromatic and non-objective works and the installation of these paintings has the effect of enabling the works to be viewed as a development of the work of earlier practitioners of monochrome painting.
The accumulation of rules directing the productionand installation of Ryman’s monochromes defines a theoretical template that provides his individual paintings with a unique presence that sidesteps the prima materia label so frequently attached to monochrome painting. 130 By applying
127 TheTheidea idea of of faktura is an important consideration in the studio component of The Pink Monochrome Project because it serves to connect the materiality of an artwork with its ability to transmit ideas to the viewer. Through an integrated treatment of an artwork’s texture, surface and construction, Russian formalism recognises that ideas and emotions (such as the presences of the artists’ identity and subjectivity) operate as ‘pictorial signifiers.’ This concept is discussed in greater detail in relation to my studio research in the appendix. Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, ‘From Faktura to Factography,’ October, no. 30, Fall, 1984, pp. 83-119. 128 David Batchelor, ‘On Painting and Pictures: In conversation with Robert Ryman’, Frieze Magazine, no. 10, May, 1993, http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/on_paintings_and_pictures/, (accessed 4 August 2007). 129 ibid. 130 Prima materia is a term used to discuss the purely physical character of monochrome painting. See Peter Osbourne (ed.), From an Aesthetic Point of View, London: Serpent’s Tail Press, 2000, p. 151.
50 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT what Frances Colpitt refers to as a “System of Opinion”s131 Ryman’s paintings explore the potential for systematic thinking, enhancing the potential for the production and interpretation of meaning through the use of a language derived from the history of a highly reductive form of painting. As a consequence, Ryman’s paintings build a bridge between the idea and concept of monochrome painting, a position that embraces the artist’s own aesthetic identity.
Agnes Martin
The final artist to be discussed in this chapter is Agnes Martin. Martin was a contemporary of Robert Ryman and Ad Reinhardt but, aside from Valdislav Strzeminski’s partner Katarzyna Koboro, is one of the few women artists who made a significant contribution to what might be referred to as second-generation monochrome painting. Throughout her long career, Martin was a prolific writer and although many of her writings take the form of poetry and extended diary entries, a substantial amount of her commentary relates to the development of a personal philosophy of art.
Unlike Ad Reinhardt and Robert Ryman who developed a highly specific series of rules and systems that operated as guidelines for the production of their art, Martin’s writings speak from a clearly subjective position. However, as with Robert Ryman, Martin was fascinated by Kazimir Malevich’s theories of art, particularly the idea that non-objective art holds a unique ability to transmit “pure feeling” and function as objects that are not “copies of living things, but will themselves be a living thing.”132
Early in her career Martin wrote “Abstract or non-objective feelings are a very important part of our lives.”133 This comment states that not only does abstract art have the ability to transmit human emotions, it is also more suited to the representation of individual and personal subjectivities than mimetic or pictorial art. Martin developed this concept further by saying, “People are not aware of their abstract emotions, which are a big part of their lives, except when they listen to music or look at art.”134 As recognised by the discipline of psychoanalysis, feelings are abstract because they operate symbolically rather than literally. For Martin, monochrome painting is significant because it allowed “the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings”135 and, as she argued, this way of painting also holds the ability to “renew memories”136 through time.
131 Colpitt, Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century, p. 153. 132 Kazimir Malevich, ‘From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting’ in Harrison & Wood (eds.), Art in Theory 1900-1990, p. 172. 133 Quoted in the exhibition catalogue, Agnes Martin, Barbara Haskell (ed.), Whitney Museum of Art, New York, 1993, p. 11. Published by Harry N. Abrams Inc. 134 Irving Sandler, ‘Agnes Martin: The Untroubled Mind’, Art Monthly, no. 169, September, 1993, p. 3. 135 ibid. 136 Thomas McEvilly, ‘Grey Geese Descending: The Art of Agnes Martin’, Artforum, vol. 25, no. 10, Summer, 1987, p. 94.
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Martin wanted her paintings to evoke an emotional response in the viewer and she was particularly interested in communicating what she referred to as the feelings of “happiness” and “tranquillity.”137 In 1976, Martin produced the monochrome Subjectivity and two years later she produced another work called Ordinary Happiness. These titles confirm that Martin’s aim was to develop a visual language that held the possibility to portray human emotions in a way that clearly avoided the visually prescriptive limitations of mimetic art.
Fig 6: Agnes Martin, Praise. 1976. Acrylic rubber stamp print (39 x 36 cm). Craig F. Starr Gallery, New York.
Martin’s way of conveying emotional states and subjective experiences, was through the exploration of the logic, structure and philosophy of grids. Typically grids are seen to be a part of a dehumanising, machine-like aesthetic, however, Martin believed that if the orderliness of the grid was hand drawn and interrupted by imperfections and irregular variations, it could be employed as a vehicle for communicating aesthetic and emotional experiences through the use of formal subtleties and variations. Martin’s works are said to have “feminised the grid” and her process is
137 Sandler, ‘Agnes Martin: The Untroubled Mind’, p. 3.
52 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT described in detail by Rosalind Krauss who stated that Martin “uses an orthodox language for unorthodox purposes.”138
Confirming Martin’s humanistic application of the grid, the technique used to cover the surfaces of her monochromes can be interpreted through the application of theories developed by the Women’s Art Movement during the 1970s, also defined as “the gentle arts.”139 Martin’s grids resemble knitting or sewing patterns or the warp and weft structure of textiles. Through the elevation of the applied arts into the realm of high art, in particular the monochrome, Martin’s paintings make a series of innovative connections combining the rational, ordered and at times masculine, tradition of abstraction and monochrome painting with the practices of pre-industrial women’s domestic craft.140
Another way that Martin positioned her monochromes was through the use of subdued earthy or natural colours. Writers on Martin’s paintings have remarked that this palette was important for her because light colours hold the ability to ground viewers and to draw them into the picture plane rather than repelling them as she thought bright colours would.141 Martin spent much of her life living in rural and remote areas in both Canada and the United States, including Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Taos, New Mexico, and through the use of an earth palette her monochromes make reference to the geographically specific colours of the vegetation and earth of these places. The co-ordinates of Martin’spersonal subjectivity and geographical specificity affirm the direction of her practice and from these perspectives her inventive monochromes lend themselves to interpretation from the perspectives of cultural theory.142
Throughout her life Martin believed that solitude and isolation, as well as meditation, enabled individuals to gain a deeper and more accurate understanding of their own being. By leaving New York City in the mid-1960s and by abandoning art for several years, Martin did what she described as “turning her back to the world.”143 Through isolation and introspection Martin believed that she gained a greater understanding of herself and as a result of this experience her advice to other artists was “to abandon mimicking the world of reality and to take every opportunity of being alone.”144 This attitude cemented Martin’s personal philosophy of life with her professional approach to art.
138 Rosalind Krauss in Agnes Martin, Barbara Haskell (ed.), Whitney Museum of Art, New York, 1993, p. 134. Published by Harry N. Abrams Inc. 139 Jennifer Isaacs, The Gentle Arts, Willoughby, NSW: Lansdowne Press, 1987. 140 TheexplorationThe exploration andand reinterpretation reinterpretation of theseof these binary binary associations associations hashas beenbeen anan inspirationinspiration toto thethe developmentdevelopment ofof thethe studio component of The Pink Monochrome Project, an issue that is discussed further in chapter the appendix. 141 Tom Collins, ‘Agnes Martin Reflects on Art and Life’, Geronimo, vol. 2, January, 1999, pp. 3-7. 142 Lucy Lippard’s more recent writing focuses on the issue of locality as a site for the representation of subjectivity. See The Lure of the Local, New York: The New Press, 1997. 143 Collins, ‘Agnes Martin Reflects on Art and Life,’ p. 4. 144 Agnes Martin, Painting and Writing, Ostfilden-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2005, p. 177.
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By the mid-1960s the most innovative and provocative critics and historians of contemporary art were women, many of whom became fascinated both with Martin’s artistic practice and her personality. These writers include Dore Ashton, Rosalind Krauss, Lucy Lippard, Griselda Pollock and Barbara Rose, all of whom wrote from a position combining art criticism with what would later become known as cultural theory. Towards the end of the 1960s the character of the art-world had changed sufficiently to enable artists such as Martin to transgress the divide separating Modernism from Postmodernism. Martin’s contribution led to the affirmation of what might be called the Postmodern monochrome, in other words, a type of monochrome painting that absorbed and interpreted the theoretical influences of gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity. As a consequence of Martin’s artistic experiments, the combination of her formal attitude to art making with representation of her individual subjectivity came to influence the work of subsequent generations of contemporary monochrome painters who are discussed in chapter six.
The interrelationship of the writings of theorists in the context of the work of monochrome painters, in particular Ad Reinhardt and Agnes Martin, introduced Postmodernism, Feminism and later cultural theory, into the visual arts leading to the “subjective turn”145 in monochrome painting. In order to expand upon these cultural developments, the narrative contained in chapter six maps out the consequences that led to the emergence of cultural theory as an investigative platform that is applied to the transformation of monochrome painting from the 1970s to the present.
The interpretation of the practices and writings ofthe six historical monochrome painters contained within this chapter challenges an art historical convention maintaining that monochrome painting as a practice limited to spiritual or formalist associations.146 The methods of information gathering contained in this chapter indicate that these six historical monochrome painters were concerned with the exploration of their individual subjectivities and cultural specificities through their art practices and writings. A significant gap also emerges separating the writings of these artists with the writings of the selected theorists discussed in chapter three. Through the study of artists’ writings, insights into the practices of historical monochrome painters reveal that the creative intent of the artists, as well as the interpretation of their work, can be assessed from the critical perspectives of cultural theory.
Building on the writings of Dore Ashton, Rosalind Krauss, Lucy Lippard, Griselda Pollock and Barbara Rose, are a more recent generation of theorists who have applied the analytical perspectives of cultural theory to the interpretation of monochrome painting including Victor Burgin, Yves- Alain Bois, Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt. The writings of these four theorists are discussed
145 The termsubjective turn is associated with the generation of writers who were active in the aftermath of the social and political events of May 1968 and range from Herbert Marcuse to Michel Foucault. 146 The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985, Maurice Tuchman (ed.), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1986, pp. 17-62. Published by Abbeville Press, New York.
54 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT in chapter five in relation to the way that cultural interpretations of monochrome painting have evolved beyond the spiritual and formal interpretations discussed in chapter three.
55 CHAPTER FIVE
The impact of cultural theory on the interpretation of historical and contemporary monochrome painting 1970-2010: Victor Burgin, Yve-Alain Bois, Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt
The purpose of this chapter is to analyse samples of theoretical writing with the aim of identifying the traces, influences and critical strategies of cultural theory on the interpretation of monochrome painting during the era of Postmodernism. The theorists discussed in this chapter are selected because of the way that issues relating to individual subjectivity and cultural specificity inform their interpretations of monochrome painting. The publications discussed in this chapter are: Victor Burgin’s Situational Aesthetics (1969) and Socialist Formalism (1976), Yve-Alain Bois’ Painting as Model (1990), Thierry de Duve’s Kant after Duchamp (1996), and Frances Colpitt’s Systems of Opinion (2002).
As discussed in chapter six, from the 1960s onwards, there was an exponential growth of writings by a new generation of theorists whose critical positions influenced the interpretation and production of several newer generations of monochrome painters. Importantly, many of the first generation of Postmodern theorists, including Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard, had either a direct or indirect influence on the development of art theory and criticism during these decades.147 In response to this situation, the designated roles associated with the critical placement of art historians and critics became contested. New descriptors, including the term cultural theorist, had the effect of repositioning traditionally specific, and clearly delineated, roles with those relating to interdisciplinary readings and interpretations. Within this chapter these discourses are examined via a discussion of the writings of Victor Burgin, Yves- Alain Bois, Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt, all of whom contributed to the interpretation of monochrome painting during this era.
Although Postmodernism is frequently defined as a disparate network of discourses and dialogues bringing together several generations of critics and theorists, the common position held by many of its adherents is that Modernism is a flawed project because the scope of its critique was limited to prescriptive trajectories including those relating to the concepts of Essentialism and universality,
147 As discussed in Chapter Six through the writings of Marcia Hafif.
56 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT and that its development was channelled through a linear progression of metanarratives.148 The emphasis placed on the significance of linear metanarratives had a prevailing influence on the way that the history of painting during the twentieth century was constructed. When the history of monochrome painting is included into this linear or evolutionary metanarrative, it frequently becomes historicised and perceived as being an endpoint, in other words, an aesthetic “trap.”149 This argument has had the effect of situating monochromes either at the endpoint of the evolutionary narrative of modern painting or as an art historical cul-de-sac.150 Francis Colpitt states that, historically, monochrome painting was seen to signal the end of painting, “Reinhardt’s claim to be making the last paintings anyone could make echoes Malevich’s arrival at ‘the zero form’ in the black square and Rodchenko’s declaration of ‘the end of painting’ in the red, yellow and blue canvases.”151 In contrast to this position, this chapter demonstrates the possibilities for the renewal and transformation of contemporary monochrome painting.
As discussed in chapter four through the writings of the early practitioners of monochrome painting (including Kazimir Malevich and Valdislav Strzeminski), it appears that there could be only one monochrome because monochromes were perceived to symbolise the conclusion of a linear form of evolutionary development within the history of painting. From the outset, monochrome painting proved to be an enigma to Modernist commentators because the practice of monochrome painting was perceived to be a stylistic endgame. The ambivalence to the development of monochrome painting is characterised by Lucy Lippard who, as late as 1967, claimed, “monochrome painting is one of the few remaining avenues open to reductive art in spite of the immanent conclusion which it threatens itself.”152
From today’s perspective, in response to the transformation of monochrome painting, it seems increasingly irrelevant to ask the question, “Do monochromes signify the end of painting?” and increasingly relevant to ask, “How have individual practitioners of monochrome painting engaged with its reinvention?” When viewed from this perspective, it becomes apparent that monochrome painting did not evolve in the same way as abstract painting because the practice of monochrome painting was initiated with a premise that contravenes the logic of sequential or linear narratives. In this way, monochromes were either ignored or dismissed by art theorists during the era of Modernism because they were identified with a condition of stasis and perceived to exist in a non-
148 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991, p. xi. 149 Carter Ratcliff, ‘Mostly Monochrome’, Art in America, vol. 69, no. 4, April, 1981, pp. 111-139. 150 J. Alfred Barr’s famous diagram maps out the influences and pedigree of painting styles from the period 1910 to 1940 culminating with the monochrome as an end point. Reproduced in the exhibition catalogue, The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985, Maurice Tuchman (ed.), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1986, p. 18. Published by Abbeville Press, New York. 151 Colpitt, ‘Systems of Opinion’, Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 179. 152 Lucy Lippard, ‘The Silent Art’, Art in America, vol. 55, no. 1, January–February, 1967, pp. 58-63.
57 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT evolutionary condition of aesthetic suspended animation. As a result of these perceived limitations and negative interpretations, monochromes have increasingly become the object of interpretation to contemporary writers whose theories are informed by a cultural engagement with monochrome painting.153
In relation to the critical location of monochrome painting, it must be emphasised that many of the recent discourses informing the interpretation of monochrome painting reveal that the history and practice of monochromes is more closely related to the critical agendas of readymades and Conceptual Art than mainstream abstraction. As a consequence, monochrome painting has proved to be an enigma that has remained problematic to the history and evolution of Modernist abstraction. As discussed in chapter three, monochrome painting was either trivialised or excluded from commentaries and histories of abstract painting.154 Monochrome painting functions, philosophically, as a critical system and depends upon interpretation rather than craft or stylistic innovation. By existing in an apparent state of formal suspended animation, monochrome painting stresses a shift in the signifying system that prioritises the passive viewer over the critically active interpreter. As a style, monochrome painting could not, and was not going to, develop in any particular direction, at least stylistically, because it had already achieved its result as early as 1913. What becomes apparent in relation to the work of contemporary monochrome painters is that many of its practitioners, including Marcia Hafif and Matthew Deleget, are making monochromes that exist not only as a response to the history of monochrome painting but also as a vehicle for non-pictorial modes of representation.
The production of versions of the same yet different monochromes has led to a situation that has enabled the discourse and dialogue of monochrome painting to easily transition into a philosophical activity in as much as it can be seen to exist as an artistic activity. The emphasis that monochromes place on a viewer’s response, interpretation and engagement to painting has also assisted with its inclusion into the critical discourses of Postmoderism. In relation to this position, a new generation of theorists, critics and writers since the late 1960s have attempted to re-engage many of the debates surrounding the cultural relevance and limitations of monochrome painting through an analysis of the interpretive and representational potential of monochrome painting. As discussed in chapter three, the interpretation of monochrome painting exists in a paradoxical double bind, and from a Modernist perspective, it has frequently been characterised as being un-Modern while from a Postmodern perspective it is sometimes portrayed as an emblem of Modernism.
Since the 1980s, and in the context of the growth of theoretical writings, monochrome painting has experienced an ever-increasing transformation through not only its production but also through
153 Thierry de Duve, Kant after Duchamp, Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996, p. 199-280. 154 Clement Greenberg, The Collected Essays and Criticism: Modernism with a Vengeance 1957-1969, vol. 4, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, pp. 250-256.
58 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT its interpretation. Contemporary artists including Marcia Hafif, Joseph Marioni, John Nixon and Matthew Deleget have, in highly individual ways, made innovative – and at times surprising – contributions to the renewal of monochrome painting. In many instances the methodologies of their practices runs parallel to the debates and theories of writers including Victor Burgin, Yves- Alain Bois, Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt.
Many interpretations of monochrome painting produced since the late 1960s have proven to be less ideologically driven and more pragmatic in their response to and assessment of the practices and writings of artists. During the early years of the twentieth century, the critical writing that now forms the corpus of critical thinking on the topic of monochrome painting established a pattern that prioritised a formal interpretation of non-objective painting over its potential to interpret social and cultural concerns. As previously discussed in chapter three, theorists like Wilhelm Worringer believed that the more abstract an artwork became, the less capable it was of being empathetic. Although Modernist critics from Wilhelm Worringer to Clement Greenberg maintained that abstraction held the potential for alternative forms of representation, the relationship between the practice of monochrome painting and its ability to represent cultural concerns remained unexamined as a critical discussion until it was identified by a generation of writers including Victor Burgin, Yves-Alain Bois, Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt.
The specific arguments contained within the writings of contemporary theorists and critics that are examined in this chapter reveal the extent to which cultural theory has shaped the discussion and interpretation of contemporary monochrome painting. Since the late 1960s the attitudes contained in the writings of many art historians and critics has been influenced by the emergence of cultural theory. Characteristically these writings focus on a critical examination of Modernist interpretations of monochrome painting. Through the production of new and alternative art histories by writers such as Frances Colpitt, the treatment of individual artistic practices becomes repositioned as a component within a much broader contextual schema.155 Since the 1970s, the conflicts stemming from the power relationships and roles that separated theorists from artists during the era of Modernism also subsided as art theory became increasingly professionalised. As a consequence, many of the more responsive writings of contemporary theorists have increasingly treated the writings of artists as informed and credible sources of critical information.156
By the early 1970s a new generation of theorists started to develop innovative paradigms in an attempt to widen the terms of reference from which contemporary art could be assessed.157 Many younger commentators from disparate parts of the world, including France, England, United
155 For example Colpitt, Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century. 156 In her introduction to Art as Art, Barbara Rose refers to the conflict that existed between Clement Greenberg and Ad Reinhardt. Barbara Rose (ed.), Art as Art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt, New York: Viking Press,1975, p. xxi. 157 For example Leo Steinberg in the United States and Victor Burgin in England.
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States and Australia, played a key role in redefining the status of the art object in the context of how artists choose to represent their individual subjectivities and geographical placement.158 The increasingly wide geographical dispersal of these critical responses in relation to the status of art is an important consideration because it explains the connection made by cultural theorists who through their writings increasingly identified the representation of artists’ subjectivity to their production of monochrome painting.
Victor Burgin’s essay, Situational Aesthetics, first published in October 1969, is the earliest sample of critical writing to be discussed in relation to the cultural interpretation of monochrome painting.159 Within this essay Burgin develops a discussion linking the criticism of the formal values, rules and systems that defined much of the discourse surrounding art history during the era of Modernism. Key to Burgin’s observations is the impact that institutions such as galleries and museums have on the way art is presented and interpreted. Burgin argues that “situational aesthetics” is an explanation of the cultural frameworks that regulate the “structures of psychological experience and the representation of subjectivity.”160 Burgin’s theories are influenced by some of the early concepts of cultural theory that originated in Marxism. From this perspective, Burgin sought to discuss the character and limitations of Anglo-American formalism through the paintings and writings of Malevich. In a later essay titled Socialist Formalism, first published in 1976, Burgin developed a critique of what he called the “laissez-faire subjectivism” of mimetic or pictorial art.161 The intent of this essay was to retrospectively discuss what he thought to be the limitations of representational art and to analyse the way that Russian Formalism and as a consequence, historical monochrome painting, attempted to communicate meaning via a non-literal depiction of social and political contexts.
Socialist Formalism develops a discussion of Malevich’s work that emphasises the artist’s political and subjective agenda, “The Western assessment of the importance of Malevich amongst modern Russian artists is readily understood: his work, his concern for ‘the spiritual in art’ is easily accommodated within the Western tradition of Romantic Formalism.”162 Burgin also emphasises that “The brand of formalism propounded by Greenberg and Fried is in direct line of descent from the attempt by Bell and Fry to ‘free’ art from concerns not ‘peculiarly its own.’”163 Burgin’s analysis is innovative because his writings operate as precursors to cultural theory in that they situate the work of the Russian Constructivists within a specific socio-cultural setting that emphasises
158 For example Ian Burn and Terry Smith in Australia. 159 Victor Burgin, ‘Situational Aesthetics’, Studio International, vol. 178, no. 915, London, October, 1969, pp. 118- 121. 160 ibid. p. 118. 161 Victor Burgin, ‘Socialist Formalism’, Studio International, vol. 191, no. 980, London, March/April, 1976, pp. 17- 28. 162 ibid. p. 19. 163 ibid.
60 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT the way that artists such as Malevich choose to represent their own identities and subjectivities through monochrome painting. From an art historical perspective, Burgin’s essays were influential in that they subsequently came to influence the reinterpretation of Russian Constructivism in ways that went far beyond the limited framework of formalism and metaphysics.
Although writers such as Lucy Lippard hinted at the subjective and representational aspect of Ad Reinhardt’s monochromes, for example The Silent Artfirst published in 1967,164 a more detailed discussion establishing a significant connection linking monochrome painting to the depiction of an individual artist’s subjectivity was not achieved until the writings of Victor Burgin in the late 1960s. Many of Leo Steinberg’s essays, collectively published in 1972 under the title Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art165 attempted to “let the world in again”166 by developing a link between formalism and the everyday. Steinberg’s discussion of the work of Jasper Johns and his appraisal of the political writings of Harold Rosenberg, as well as his position that defined “abstraction and representation as analogues of experience,”167 obviously parallel the writings of Victor Burgin.
Significantly, the initial critique of formalism as an artistic style and a method of criticism was developed by artists, many of whom simultaneously also operated as theorists. It was the generation of artists who also worked as theorists, including Victor Burgin, Joseph Kosuth and Ian Burn, who came to influence the way that cultural theory became absorbed into the discipline of art history and practice. The attitudes that combined a discussion of formalism and the everyday had a significant impact on the production of art theory and criticism especially in relation to the reinterpretation of Modernism and more specifically, the reinterpretation of monochrome painting.
By developing the earlier ideas of a generation of artist-theorists an entirely new generation of theoretical writers emerged who proposed a sustained discussion of formalism from a Postmodern perspective. Notable among these writers are Yve-Alain Bois, Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt, all have written extensively on the trajectories and consequences of Modernism, specifically in the context of the relationship between formalist theory and practice and cultural analysis.
Central to Yve-Alain Bois’ methodology in Painting as Model is the application of Post- Structuralism to an interpretation of Modernist painting. The aim of Bois’ ‘close reading’ is to locate formalism within a more inclusive and broader culturally specific field of significations and interpretations. Bois argues that European formalism and in particular, Russian Formalism (as articulated by P. N. Medvedev and M. M. Bakhtin), aimed at “reducing form and content to one
164 Lucy Lippard, ‘The Silent Art’, Art in America, vol. 55, no. 1, January-February, 1967, pp. 58-63. 165 Leo Steinberg, ‘Other Criteria’ in Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art, London: Oxford University Press, 1972, pp. 55-91. 166 ibid, p. 90. 167 Colpitt, quoting Leo Steinberg, in ‘Systems of Opinion,’ p. 155.
61 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT common denominator,”168 in other words, eliminating the contrasting or oppositional position that historically separated form and content. The latter development of formalism in the United States, Bois argues, led to a position that gave rise to what he defines as “The Two Formalisms” and it is this situation that has divided North American and European perspectives on abstraction and non- objective art with regard to the issue of its representational capabilities. Bois verifies this position by quoting the writings of Russian Formalists, Medvedev and Bakhtin, “European formalism not only did not deny content, did not make content a conditional and detachable element of the work, but on the contrary, strove to attribute deep ideological meaning to form itself.”169 Bois then applies this critique to what he identifies as Clement Greenberg’s ‘materialist formalism’. Bois’ statement that, “Greenberg gradually lost, as Wolfflin did at the end of his career, the sense that the formal structure of any given work is both a part and a determinant of its signification,”170 verifies his application of the interpretative methodology of cultural theory to the discourse of art history. This argument asserts that from the genesis of monochrome painting representational elements played an important part in the relationship between form and content. As was the case with Victor Burgin’s interpretation of the tradition of Russian formalism, Bois adopted Medvedev and Bakhtin’s position by affirming their maxim “form is always ideological.”171
Expanding upon Bois’ trajectory, Thierry de Duve’s magnum opus, Kant after Duchamp, contains a line of reasoning that serves to interpret monochrome painting through the deployment of an analysis of structure and form that resembles Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s, A Thousand Plateaus.172 As Michael Fried noted in his response to the publication of de Duve’s book, “Kant after Duchamp mounts the most formidable case yet made for Duchamp’s importance, and what makes Thierry de Duve’s achievement all the more unexpected is that this is done by way of an intense engagement with the writings of Clement Greenberg.”173 Even de Duve acknowledges throughout this publication that it was the generation of writers who reacted against the writings of Clement Greenberg, rather than those who continued with the development of his formal method of criticism, that proved to significantly develop Greenberg’s scholarship. Importantly, in relation to the critical scope of The Pink Monochrome Project, many of the key arguments contained in Kant after Duchamp make frequent references to both the writings of monochrome painters and to the theoretical dilemmas that monochrome painting presented to Modernist critics.
168 Yve-Alain Bois, Painting as Model, Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1990, p. xvii. 169 Bois quoting P. N. Medvedev and M. M. Bakhtin from The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, 1928, in Painting as Model, p. xviii. 170 ibid. p. xix. 171 ibid. 172 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. 173 Michael Fried quoted on the rear cover of Thierry dede Duve’s, Duve’s, Kant after Duchamp, London, Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996.
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Perhaps the reason why de Duve appears to focus his discussion on monochrome painting as opposed to any other style of abstraction is because monochrome painting is perceived to occupy a unique space between formalism and conceptualism while providing a parallel position to that of the readymade. De Duve’s theoretical position is confirmed by the detailed structure of Kant after Duchamp and through a discussion of monochrome painting in a chapter titled, ‘The Monochrome and the Blank Canvas’ in which he argues that the monochrome is the painterly equivalent of the readymade in that it evokes a tabula rasa as a site for the projection of a multiplicity of interpretations and representations.174 As he succinctly states, monochromes are a form of “nominalism” in that they exist not as paintings but in the name of painting as nominated by the artist. His argument is affirmed through the inclusion of an earlier chapter titled ‘The Readymade and the Tube of Paint.’175 However, de Duve also notes that there are theoretical differences separating monochromes from readymades, specifically that monochromes require a degree of mediation, craft and authorship. In this way monochromes are a theoretical equivalent to the second stage in the development of readymades, namely altered readymades. The recognition of this connection is historically significant because it develops a connection between monochrome painting and the evolution of installation practices.
One of the consequences of three decades of rigorous and ongoing reinterpretations of Modernism, formalism and as a consequence, monochrome painting, has been the closure of the binary oppositions that once separated abstraction from representational art. A key critic and art historian currently working in the field of contemporary abstraction is Frances Colpitt. A primary position in Colpitt’s writing is the idea that abstraction in general, and monochrome painting in particular, is an alternative form of representation rather than a form of non-representation. Essays such as Systems of Opinion: Abstract Painting Since 1959176 apply a method of cultural analysis to clarify unresolved issues in the writings of Modernist critics such as Clement Greenberg.177 Although Greenberg acknowledged that he did not “need a different set of eyes for Mondrian than for Piero della Francesca”178 and that “despite all of the changes it has made in the language of painting, abstraction is not so different to traditional representational painting.”179 Until the publication of Colpitt’s essay, the representational qualities of abstraction remained only partly described by commentators analysing the history of abstraction. Greenberg’s prejudices in relation to monochrome painting are apparent when he describes monochromes as “an opaque window
174 de Duve, ‘The Monochrome and The Blank Canvas’ inKant after Duchamp, p. 200. 175 Chapter three of Kant after Duchamp is titled ‘The Readymade and the Tube of Paint’ while chapter four is titled ‘The Monochrome and the Blank Canvas.’ ibid.. 176 Colpitt, ‘Systems of Opinion’, pp. 153-204. 177 Clement Greenberg, ‘Abstract and Representational’ in The Collected Essays and Criticism: Affirmations and Refusals 1950-1956, vol. 3, John O’Brian (ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, pp. 86-193. 178 ibid p. 193. 179 ibid.
63 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT pane,” and a style of art known for its “brute literalness.”180 The opacity and literalness of the work of Yves Klein and Ad Reinhardt are cited by Greenberg as only a counterpoint to the work of Jackson Pollock, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski. Greenberg went on to criticise Leo Steinberg’s essay, The Eye is Part of the Mind, for its attempt to identify abstract art as being part of the continuum of representation.181 Greenberg’s oversight inadvertently serves to identify the conceptual element of monochrome painting as being separate from his own interpretation of the overtly formal position of abstract painting.
The importance of Colpitt’s essay, Systems of Opinion, is that it clearly enunciates an argument stating that all forms of abstraction, including monochrome painting, are representational. Colpitt maintains that this idea is fundamental to the appreciation and interpretation of historical and contemporary abstraction and monochrome painting. Within this essay, Colpitt maintains that the relationship between abstraction and representation is based on the “endurance of abstract painting that suggests it has the capacity to communicate in ways unavailable to mimetic painting.”182 For Colpitt this is an age-old problem that was a central concern contained in Book X of Plato’s Republic and in this way, abstraction is a more sustainable form of representation specifically because non-objective art is not mimetic, “…it is with monochromatic painting that the toughest questions about representation are posed.”183 Although Colpitt’s essay focuses more broadly on abstraction, rather than more specifically on monochrome painting, it becomes obvious from her research that contemporary monochrome painters have chosen to treat their field of investigation as a study and representation of individual “sign systems.”184
Chapter six applies the investigative methodologies contained within the narratives of culturally informed art history and criticism, such as the writings of Victor Burgin, Yve-Alain Bois, Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt, to a discussion of the work of four contemporary monochrome painters.
180 ibid p. 190. 181 ibid. p. 188. 182 Colpitt, ‘Systems of Opinion’, p. 153. 183 ibid, p. 156. 184 ibid, p. 187.
64 CHAPTER SIX
The role of subjectivity, the practice and writing of four contemporary monochrome painters, 1970-2010: Marcia Hafif, Joseph Marioni, John Nixon and Matthew Deleget
The aim of this chapter is to identify the way that individual subjectivities have shaped the development of the practices and writings of four contemporary monochrome painters. Since the 1980s, many of the theories surrounding the practice of monochrome painting have become increasingly responsive to the subjective character of the work of contemporary practitioners. Terms such as monochromy, applied monochrome painting and everyday monochromes185 are labels that have been developed by artists and theorists in an attempt to dislodge individual artistic practices from the totalising and reductive, singular logic characterising terms such as The Monochrome. Each of these new terms, including monochromy and applied monochrome painting has been devised to initiate a concept that references individuality as well as cultural contingencies. These associations frequently relate to the artist’s relationship with the phenomenal world and, as a consequence, new insights into the interpretation of the monochromes produced by these artists can be generated through the application of cultural theory. Concepts like monochromy also serve to connect the rational and objective discourses of Modernism to the more subjective, intuitive and at times romantic, attitude found in the artworks and writings of the four contemporary monochrome painters discussed in this chapter. Terms like applied monochrome painting are central to the critical programme of cultural theory in that they dismantle the emphasis that Anglo-American formalism historically placed on the disassociation of form and content.
Through a discussion of the writings of artists and theorists it becomes apparent that for many European monochrome painters form and content have not been separated in the same way that they have been in countries such as the United States and Australia. 186 As a reaction to the binary logic of Anglo-American formalism this chapter discusses the emergence of cultural theory as a network of interpretative frameworks that hold the potential to be applied to the practices of contemporary monochrome painting from the perspectives of gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity. Examples of the representation of individual subjectivities discussed in
185 Descriptors such as Monochromy and applied monochrome painting have been invented by the German monochrome painter Andreas Exner, while the term everyday monochromes has been used to describe the photopaintings of the Melbourne based artist David Thomas. 186 This can also be seen in the work of monochrome painters from countries including Korea, Japan and South America.
65 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT this chapter include Marcia Hafif ’s combination of monochromes and feminism and John Nixon’s interpretation of experimental music through monochrome painting.
The discussion of the work of four contemporary monochrome painters contained in this chapter indicates that not only has monochrome painting become increasingly referential, it has also become a critical instrument that can be used to represent the varied identities and cultures of its individual practitioners. Of the four monochrome painters discussed in this chapter – Marcia Hafif, Joseph Marioni, John Nixon and Matthew Deleget – three reside in the United States and one in Australia, all come from very different backgrounds, and most importantly, they belong to three distinct artistic generations.187 These four particular artists were chosen as samples for interpretation because of their individual differences with regard to their varied subjectivities, age and gender.
In countries such as the United States and Australia, the emergence of forms of cultural theory including Feminism, Postmodernism, Postcolonialism and Queer Theory, have created a network of interrelated discourses influencing the evolution and transformation of monochrome painting in unique and specific ways. Conversely, Monochrome painting in Europe has been continuously a part of mainstream artistic practice at least since the 1950s.188 In contrast to this position, the acceptance and understanding of monochrome painting in places such as the United States and Australia has been significantly more marginal, especially from critical and commercial perspectives. In countries such as Australia, art has been popularised to represent themes including the nation’s history and mythology.189 This partly accounts for the reasons why landscape and portrait painting have remained dominant in Australia. A similar situation emerged in the United States where Abstract Expressionism was seen to carry overtly nationalistic overtones and was labelled “American-Type painting” by Clement Greenberg.190
Although three of the four artists discussed in this chapter, namely Marcia Hafif, Joseph Marioni and John Nixon, started producing monochrome paintings in the late 1960s and early 1970s – before the advent of cultural theory – it wasn’t until the early 1980s that their work reached maturity. Since the 1980s, these three artists have focussed exclusively on producing monochromes and throughout this time they have all produced artists writings. In contrast, Matthew Deleget, who is by far the youngest artist discussed in this chapter, only commenced producing monochromes in the 1990s. While Deleget does not work exclusively as a monochrome painter, he and his partner
187 All four artists exhibit internationally. 188 For example Marcia Hafif, Joseph Marioni and John Nixon are represented by Galerie Mark Muller in Zurich, Switzerland, and this supports the view that monochrome painting is more commercially viable in Europe than it is in the United States and Australia. 189 Bernard Smith’s Place, Taste and Tradition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979 is an example of this position. 190 Clement Greenberg, ‘American-Type Painting’ in The Collected Essays and Criticism: Affirmations and Refusals 1950-1956, vol. 3, John O’Brian (ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, pp. 217-235.
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Rossana Martinez have amassed a large amount of artists’ writings that have been included on the Minus Space website.191
Marcia Hafif
Marcia Hafif was born in Pomona, California, in 1929 and is the most senior of the contemporary monochrome painters discussed in this chapter. Hafif divides her time between Los Angeles and New York. Although Hafif is a generation younger than Agnes Martin, and one year older than Robert Ryman, she didn’t start producing monochromes until 1972. Her disillusionment with gestural abstraction is explained in a reference from a catalogue essay, “After moving to New York in 1971 after living in Rome for nearly a decade during the 1960s I realised that the painting that had interested me was now exhausted.”192 This comment reveals that Hafif ’s career crosses the divide that denotes the end of late Modernism and was a period in history that gave rise to Postmodernism. Many of Hafif ’s writings articulate the cultural shifts that took place during the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time that enabled Hafif to reinvent her art practice. In response to the shifting styles and discourses of art history during this period, Hafif states, “By the middle sixties I felt that formalism had become meaningless, it was necessary to turn inwards to rediscover the personality of painting.”193 This type of reaction to late modernism characterises her sense of disillusionment and served to redefine what many artists of Hafif ’s generation believed to be the collapse of formalism. At exactly this point in time, especially in large metropolitan centres such as New York City, Feminism was beginning to have a significant impact on the direction of society and culture. Influential publications such as Julia Kristeva’s The System and the Speaking Subject,194 identified many of the previously unrecognised cultural connections that characterised the interpretation of gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity. Importantly, the early 1970s was a time when Feminism became a part of popular culture. Within the discourses that sought to redefine the character of contemporary art in the early 1970s, it was the theories of writers such as Julia Kristeva that were rapidly assimilated into the discourses of art theory and practice. A specific example of this type of analysis relates to the way that art historian Catherine de Zegher
191 Minus Space is an online curatorial and critical project based in Brooklyn, New York that is dedicated to the promotion and interpretation of what its founders, Matthew Deleget and Rossana Martinez define as ‘reductive art’. http:// www.minusspace.com 192 Interview with Marcia Hafif, first published in the exhibition catalogue Red Paintings, Gallerie Conrads, Neuss, Germany, 1990 and subsequently published on the artist’s website. ‘Painting in the Usual Way’, Marcia Hafif, www. marciahafif.com/usualway.html, 2004-09, (accessed 12 June 2007). 193 Marcia Hafif, ‘Beginning Again’, first published in Artforum, September, 1978 and subsequently published on the artist’s website. ‘Beginning Again,’ Marcia Hafif, www.marciahafif.com/beginning.html, 2004-09 (accessed 12 June 2007). 194 Julia Kristeva, ‘The System and the Speaking Subject’ in Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.),The Tell-Tale Sign: A Survey of Semiotics, Lisse, Netherlands: Peter de Ridler Press, 1975.
67 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT uses Kristeva’s essay to analyse the way that formalism sought to define itself in opposition to the representation of subjectivity.195
By the early 1970s, Hafif ’s interpretation of Feminism was combined with an interest in Conceptual Art. As with many of her generation, it was during this phase of her long career that Hafif felt the need to abandon painting all together. In 1980, Hafif reflected on the developments and changes in her attitudes to art, “I find the terms Purity, the Absolute and Modernism to be connected to the system of Patriarchy.”196 By the mid-1970s, Hafif had begun to distil these ideas into the practice of painting by producing a series of softly coloured pastel monochromes. Although Hafif does not produce pink monochromes exclusively, pink has proved to be her most frequently used colour of choice. Since the 1970s, Hafif has created an ongoing series of flesh pink monochromes that she states in her writings have contributed to building a bridge connecting Feminism and monochrome painting. Monochromes such as Desire, produced in 1986, employ titles emphasising a particular feeling or emotion. The overtly emotional titles Hafif uses to describe her monochromes resembles the Theosophical ‘Key to the meaning of colours’ indicating that pink embodies affection.197
Fig 7: Marcia Hafif, Desire. 1986. Oil on canvas (75 x 75 cm). Private collection, Los Angeles.
195 Catherine de Zegher and Hendel Teicher, ‘Abstraction’ in New Methods of Drawing, New Haven: Drawing Centre Publication, Yale University Press, 2005, p. 175. 196 Hafif, ‘Painting in the Usual Way’. 197 Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, Thoughtforms, Wheaton, Illinois: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1986.
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Since the 1980s, Hafif ’s writings, as well as her painting practice, have also been informed by the philosophies of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze.198 As borne out by Hafif ’s writing, through a study of the theories of deconstruction, the artist’s pink monochromes have absorbed Postmodernism’s critical positions concerning the definition and status of the role of the human subject. Hafif ’s reading of Postmodern theory, and her absorption of the critical positions informing it, has facilitated her critique of the essentialist interpretation of gender and sexuality, as well as the orthodox status of ‘The Monochrome’ as an icon of Modernism. The aims of cultural theory also play a role in this process and this is revealed through the way Hafif infuses her monochromes with a sense of her own individual subjectivity.
Hafif ’s unique combination of formalism and Feminism revealed within her writings throughout the 1970s and 1980s, in conjunction with her own distinctive post-structural analysis, has resulted in a critical revaluation of the history of monochrome painting. Hafif ’s deployment of monochrome painting – at a time when installation, video and multi-media art became increasingly widespread – reveals an unconventional attitude that employs orthodox language for unorthodox purposes.
Through the representation of her own personal emotions, identity and subjectivity, Hafif has developed a theoretical position that builds upon the writings of generations of earlier monochrome painters including Kazimir Malevich and Agnes Martin. Since the 1970s, Hafif has sought to “find a new image, a new meaning for painting”199 which is succinctly confirmed by the statement “I use painting to transmit philosophical and personal experiences.”200 Hafif ’s exploration of human emotions is borne out by many of the titles of her pink monochromes that make reference to the themes of “love, passion and kinship.”201 The emotional content of Hafif ’s paintings is confirmed by her use of texture or faktura. All of the works contain softly modulated variegated finishes using different shades and tones of pink, as well as gestural surfaces. For Hafif her “new image”202 is monochrome painting and with it the possibilities that pink holds for interpretation. Unique to Hafif ’s practice is the overt manner with which she chooses to communicate her commitment to the representation of subjective experiences through the production of pink monochromes. A close study of Hafif ’s writings reveal that the methodologies informing cultural theory can be employed not only to trace the direct influences on her practice but also to interpret the way that her identity and subjectivity have been presented through monochrome painting.
198 Lilly Wei, ‘Talking Abstract: Interview with Marcia Hafif,’ Art and America, June-July, 1987, p. 27. 199 ibid. p. 29. 200 ibid. 201 ibid. p. 30. 202 Hafif ’s term new image is included in her essay ‘Beginning Again.’
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Joseph Marioni
Joseph Marioni is a contemporary artist who, like Hafif, specialises in experimental approaches to the development of monochrome painting. Marioni was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1943 and has been living in New York City since the 1970s. As is the case with Hafif, Marioni has developed a critical relationship with formalism, however, his views on the role of representation within his own monochrome painting differ substantially when compared to Hafif. Marioni’s writings reveal that he simultaneously rejects and accepts aspects of Clement Greenberg’s notion of formalism. The formal precision and focus of Marioni’s paintings reveal an affinity with Greenberg’s belief that art should be a rigorous and highly specialised practice.203
Marioni’s relationship with formalism focuses on Greenberg’s belief that painting should be considered as a self-referential object that emphasises and isolates formal considerations such as surface and flatness.204 Instead of being exclusively interested in flatness, Marioni has developed a series of techniques that aim to build up the surface of a painting by including layers of transparent veils of acrylic paint.205 These monochromes are reminiscent of the staining techniques employed by Morris Louis and from a formal perspective Marioni has gone to remarkable lengths to achieve this effect.
Marioni manufactures his own acrylic paints using pigments and a wide range of acrylic mediums and binders. By consulting scientists employed by the paint manufacturing industry, Marioni has developed a unique form of acrylic paint that he claims has a microscopic particle size allowing for increased light penetration and refraction resulting in enhanced translucency.206 In his lectures Marioni also claims that, from a scientific perspective, the type of substance that has the smallest particle size is to be found in cosmetics and he argues that the particle size contained within his paint is on par with that of makeup.207 This almost prismatic visual effect provides the paintings with a lustre that gives viewers a sense of self-reflection, evoking a meditative state of consciousness.
The stretcher frames supporting Marioni’s paintings are similarly as well considered as his use of paint. All of Marioni’s paintings are actually shaped canvases although the non-rectilinear proportions of the stretcher frame are barely obvious to the human eye. Each work tapers slightly from the top of the painting to the bottom. Marioni employs a specialist cabinetmaker to produce his stretcher frames and their construction serves to enhance the optical impact of the paintings. Although the sides and the top of the stretcher frames form a sharp angle of ninety degrees the
203 Greenberg, ‘Modernist Painting’, Art & Literature, no. 4, Spring, 1965. 204 Clement Greenberg, ‘Modernist Painting’ in Gregory Battcock (ed.), The New Art: A Critical Anthology, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1966, p. 101. 205 Marioni refers to these veils as ‘Veronicas’ in David Pestorius’ essay, ‘A Room of Four Paintings’ in the catalogue Joseph Marioni: Four Paintings, David Pestorius (ed.), University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, 2000, p.15. 206 Joseph Marioni, artist’s talk, University of Queensland, 2000. 207 ibid.
70 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT bottom edge of the frame has a softer curved edge that gently rolls under the painting. Throughout his writings, Marioni claims that the reason for the development of these highly refined structural supports is that they complement the gravitational effects of the fluidity of drying paint which is poured onto the upper section of the canvas and falls gradually towards the lower edge of the stretcher frame. Once the paint arrives at the bottom of the stretched canvas the gentle curve of the timber frame enables the paint to dry in a pattern of soft gestural rivulets that resembles the fringe on a section of lace.
Fig 8: Joseph Marioni, Red painting. 2006. Acrylic and flax on frame (122 x 102 cm). Galerie Xippas, Paris.
For Marioni the frames of reference for the appreciation of the essential qualities of painting have shifted from an emphasis that traditionally distinguishes the object from the subject. Through an alternative emphasis that foregrounds the subjective and perceptual responses of the viewer traditional subject/object relationships are inverted. In this way Marioni’s theories of perception and
71 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT representation resemble Jean Baudrillard’s idea that examines the redefinition of what he called the “destiny of objects”, namely that objects have the potential to have a second life through a process that transforms them from passive objects to active subjects through a process of interactivity.208 Furthermore, Marioni’s technique elicits from the viewer a form of introspection that relates to a broader reading and interpretation of subjectivity as propounded by cultural theory.
In an interesting postscript to the formalism-Conceptualism debate, Michael Fried admits that although he, like Greenberg, was disparaging of monochrome painting (which he once described as “artistically inert and depressingly literal”),209 he now claims that Marioni’s paintings are “fountains of accumulated energy”.210 Reading this essay the discerning connoisseur of monochrome painting will be quickly alerted to Fried’s admission that he no longer concedes that monochrome painting is depressingly literal as it appeared to him and other Greenburgian critics in the 1960s. In relation to so much contemporary art, Fried appears willing to review his negative critique of monochromes as a style of painting that he at one time blamed for initiating Minimalism, an issue he discussed in his widely debated 1967 essay, Art and Objecthood.211 Fried concludes his review of Marioni’s exhibition by stating that, in contrast to the way contemporary art has evolved since the 1960s, monochrome painting can now be seen as an extension of formalism rather than simply a reaction to it.
Aside from the subtle modulation of expressive qualities found in Marioni’s paintings that remind Fried of Robert Ryman’s monochromes, other critics such as David Cohen claim that Marioni’s monochromes successfully combine the issues of colour and empathy.212 This position parallels Marioni’s description of his own paintings throughout many of his interviews and writings. In a YouTube video interview with fellow artist Jeffrey Collins, Marioni says, “painting is a pleasure for me and I hope that my paintings are a pleasure for other people, what I try to communicate is a raw sense experience,”213 following on from this comment he says “rather than attempting to seduce or overwhelm the viewer, my aim is to enable the viewer to enter into a state of contemplation, reverie and introspection.”214 Many of Marioni’s paintings are easel size and when asked where the
208 Jean Baudrillard, ‘Subjective Discourse or The Non-Functional System of Objects’ inRevenge of the Crystal, edited and translated by Paul Foss and Julian Pefanis, Leichhardt, Sydney: Pluto Press in association with the Power Institute of Fine Arts, University of Sydney, 1990, p. 36. 209 Michael Fried, ‘Joseph Marioni, The Painter,’ Artforum, September, 1998, http://www.tiac.net/~marioni/reviews. html, (accessed 23 May 2008). 210 ibid. 211 Michael Fried, ‘Art and Objecthood’, in Gregory Battcock (ed.), Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1986, pp. 116-147. 212 David Cohen, ‘Joseph Marioni at Peter Blum’, Artcritical, http://artcritical.com/2006/05/26/gallery-going-a- version-of-this-article-first-appeared-in-the-new-york-sun-may-25-2006/, Friday 26 May 2006, (accessed 3 September 2008). 213 Jeffrey Collins, ‘Joseph Marioni Interview and Show’, Jeffrey Collins: Painter, http://jeffreycollinspainter.blogspot. com/2008/06/joseph-marioni-interview-and-show.html, 27 June 2008, (accessed 3 September 2008). 214 ibid.
72 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT ideal place would be for the installation of he works he replied, “in people’s homes.”215 It is these types of comments that justify the extraordinary efforts that Marioni goes through to produce a painting and these statements emphasise the way that he attempts to translate the optical vitality of colour, as well as associations relating to introspection and domesticity, to the viewers of his monochromes.
The colour pink forms a chromatic component of Marioni’s practice. Many of his ‘red’ paintings are actually a faded red or, more accurately, maroon in colour and works such as Red painting, 2006, also contain a subtle band of magenta running through the middle of the work. In interviews and writings Marioni states that, for monochrome painters, colour is a very important vehicle for the representation of moods and emotions and that warm colours such as red and magenta play a particular role in his work.
Marioni’s writings mention that he uses colour for the purpose of representing his personal subjectivity. Examples of this approach can be found in the way that he articulates aspects of his own individual identity through his writings and lectures on monochrome painting. In relation to his own moods, emotions and subjective use of colour, Marioni states, “I paint darker paintings in winter and brighter paintings in summer, the selection of colour is entirely personal”216 and in a similar way he says, “I like to work within a warm palate, it has to do with my Italian background and my crazy Neapolitan mother.”217 These comments contradict the logic of historical formalism in that, through them, Marioni consciously takes into account both his personal emotions and cultural identity. The Postmodern notion of identity politics thus forms a part of the rationale informing the production of these paintings and assists in the definition of an obvious position that has proven to be highly significant in establishing a connection between the critical techniques of cultural theory in the context of contemporary monochrome painting.
Marioni’s monochromes have been described as “slow, deliberate, meditative, spiritual, opinionated, intuitive, formal and energetic.”218 This reading indicates that the interpretation of monochrome painting by established writers such as Michael Fried has altered considerably over the past forty years. In previous decades it would have been unlikely that the work of an individual artist, let alone a monochrome painter, could have been described in so many ways, yet from the position of cultural theory one of the most significant descriptions of Marioni’s paintings in relation to his interpretation of subjectivity is that he uses “expressive brush strokes and colour to convey a sense of empathy to the viewer.”219 The use of the word empathy harks back to the writings of Wilhelm Worringer and confirms that even the most severely abstracted form of art has the potential to
215 ibid. 216 ibid. 217 ibid. 218 Michael Fried ‘Art and Objecthood’, p. 1. 219 David Cohen, ‘Joseph Marioni at Peter Blum.’
73 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT communicate humanistic values. Through their commercial success, Marioni’s monochromes have made an important contribution to the evolution of contemporary monochrome painting and this approach to art has provided monochrome painting with a sense of commercial acceptability as well as an expanded critical vocabulary. From a generational perspective, Marioni’s paintings have assisted in the transformation of monochrome painting by providing a representational ingredient through the development of a personally subjective language. Marioni’s painting and writing can be productively interpreted by the critical mechanisms of cultural theory in that they present a statement of intent that refutes the obviously closed system of Anglo-American formalism, a system that denies the value and significance of subjective experiences.
John Nixon
The third artist to be discussed in this chapter is John Nixon. Unlike the other contemporary monochrome painters previously discussed, Nixon lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Nixon was born in Sydney in 1949 and, after studying in Melbourne in the 1960s he moved to Brisbane in the 1980s, moving to Sydney during the 1990s, and finally returning to Melbourne in 2000. As is the case with both Hafif and Marioni, Nixon’s monochromes have been strongly influenced by European non-objective art, however his paintings combine, and subsequently represent, a broad range of influences. Rather than being singularly influenced by European abstraction, Nixon’s monochromes combine the traditions of the readymade, Arte Povera, Concrete Poetry, as well as Conceptual Art and installation practices.220 It has been widely argued that this broad based attitude towards the appropriation and negotiation of a diversity of styles and influences is a particularly Australian response to the issues of geographical isolation and the widely acknowledged ‘time lag’ that oversaw the frequently stilted and delayed acceptance of Modernism into Australian art.221 Due to the multiplicity of references to art history and popular culture in Nixon’s work, and his inclusion of a diversity of artistic styles, techniques and references, his monochromes have been referred to as Postmodern.222 Through the use of appropriation Nixon’s practice signifies a departure from the conventional Modernist idea that the monochrome painting is a pure, autonomous, totalising and self-contained branch of formalism.
In a unique and individual way, Nixon utilises the tradition of monochrome painting and concrete poetry to articulate his personal epistemology. Throughout many of his catalogues, Nixon includes word maps that resemble concrete poems spelling out connections between his studio practice
220 One of Nixon’s early reasons for producing monochromes was his discovery, as an art student in Melbourne during the late 1960s, that the National Gallery of Victoria did not have any historical or contemporary monochromes in its collection. See Judy Annear’s essay in the catalogue John Nixon: Thesis, Selected works from 1968-1993, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, 1994. p. 2. 221 As observed in the writings of Ian Burn, Terry Smith, and Paul Taylor and more recently in Eileen Chanin and Steven Miller (eds.), Degenerates and Perverts, Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2005. 222 Justin Andrews, ‘John Nixon’s EPW–A Universal Project’, Justin Andrews, http://www.justin-andrews.info/html/ john_nixon_review.html, July 2004, (accessed 2 May 2010).
74 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT and his life through a range of textual and visual associations. By connecting words such as ‘bread’ and ‘monochrome’, associations are evoked in the imagination of the viewer or reader.223 The linguistic charts that are often included in Nixon’s publications224 constitute a glossary of familiar objects and associations building bridges between his practice of monochrome painting and the articulation of his personal subjectivity. As observed by Judy Annear, “Nixon’s diagrams map out his understanding of the world,”225 however, this is not achieved in a literal way but rather in a poetic or phenomenological way. Annear goes on to explain the subtlety of this claim by commenting that Nixon’s way of representing the world is “Art as matter, not art as illusion or narrative”. Annear substantiates this position by concluding, “The works make the materials existing in life, both the subject of art and the art itself.”226
Fashioned out of the attitudes of historical monochrome painting, many of Nixon’s earliest works are black and this has been substantiated by the way that, throughout his career as an artist, Nixon has maintained a strong fascination with the life and work of Kazimir Malevich. By indirectly comparing Nixon to Malevich, Janet Shanks notes, “The Monochrome – the first of John Nixon’s paintings was a black square taking the artist to perhaps the most basic resource: the self.”227 This revealing comment sheds light on Nixon’s deeply personal and at times autobiographical use of monochromes. In contrast to earlier generations of monochrome painters, many of Nixon’s paintings are titled Self-portrait, non-objective composition. Through this systematic use of titles, Nixon has established an innovative connection between portraiture and monochrome painting. Shanks qualifies these associations by giving her essay the subtitle ‘A Reading – Towards the Gesamtkunstwerk.’228 This subtitle develops a proposition for a total work of art that integrates the life of the artist and his work. This concept can also be compared to the aims of cultural theory that serve to foreground the socio-cultural interpretations of any given area of study. Nixon’s choice of titles for his paintings is also culturally driven with regard to the way that he has chosen to represent his personal tastes, interests and subjectivity. By naming a monochrome Claudia Schiffer (after the supermodel), or Sonic Youth (after the experimental punk music band), or Peter Halley (after the American abstract painter), Nixon encodes his work with a level of representation that links high art and popular cultures in an overtly Postmodern way and that has the obvious potential to be interpreted from the perspectives of cultural theory. This type interpretation reveals that Nixon’s identity is constructed through his own personal interests.
223 John Nixon and John Young (eds.), Kerb Your Dog Textbook, no. 12, Sydney: Sydney College of the Arts, 1992, p. 12. 224 For example the exhibition catalogue, John Nixon: Tableaux, Deakin University Gallery, Deakin University, Geelong, 1991. 225 Judy Annear in John Nixon: Thesis, p. 2. 226 ibid. 227 See Janet Shanks’ catalogue essay in John Nixon: Tableaux, p. 1. 228 ibid.
75 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT
Fig 9: John Nixon, Orange Monochrome (for Peter Halley). 1993. Enamel on board (30.5 x 30.5 cm). Chartwell Collection, Auckland.
Since the late 1960s, Nixon has continuously endeavoured to build a bridge between his concept of daily life and his practice as a monochrome painter. He has achieved this in several distinct ways, for example, by converting the gallery space into a studio (in other words, converting a private or semi-domestic working space into a public space), and through the inclusion of readymade objects as framing devices for his monochrome paintings (the use of everyday objects such as chairs, suitcases, bicycles, musical instruments and other personal items also has the effect of negating the purity of the white cube of the modern gallery space). Nixon confirms this position in an interview with Ben Curnow, “…my use of readymade objects, in relation to my own work, are not within the idea of the non-aesthetic but within the idea of a world-view, so they are deliberately chosen.”229 He goes on to say, “My intention is to present these objects in terms of their Gestalt.”230 Although
229 John Nixon: Thesis, p. 9. 230 ibid.
76 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT it has been argued that Nixon’s combination of objects and monochromes in an installation format is closer to conceptual art practices than it is to traditional non-objective painting, Nixon claims that three-dimensional monochromes are actually a form of “expanded painting”231 rather than sculptures or installations. Through these formal experiments, Nixon’s practice directly references the work of the historical Russian avant-garde in that ‘expanded painting’, as he defines it, is a logical extension of Constructivist aesthetics. As was the case with Camilla Gray’s analysis of the Russian avant-garde, Nixon has developed a type of formalism that is “not only an aesthetic but a philosophy of life.”232
Nixon’s practice exists in the shadow of the debates that connect the monochrome and the readymade, as discussed in chapter five. However, unlike Duchamp, who preferred to purchase new objects that inevitably became increasingly aesthetic through the course of time, most of Nixon’s readymades are already used by the time they are included in exhibitions. Many of the wooden chairs and worn-out leather suitcases are so old that Malevich actually could have used them in his travels across Russia and Europe in the years before the October Revolution of 1917. The link between Nixon’s use of readymades and his personal life also forms a part of his writings, “The objects are chosen from my daily life. The chosen objects are also authentic to my lifestyle, these objects have been a part of my life.”233 Many of these readymades are altered using mixed media and paint; in certain instances chairs become monochromes that in turn become chairs again, resuming their practical use value after they are returned to the artist’s home or studio. In an effort to summarise the philosophical implications of this approach to art making, Nixon states, “I interpret the readymade and the monochrome within the idea of an art/life dialectic.”234 This quote sits at the heart of Nixon’s practice and indicates the importance of both the readymade and the monochrome in relation to the representation of the artist’s subjectivity. Nixon’s attitude to the production of his art demonstrates the way that the methodologies of cultural theory can be applied to a cultural interpretation of monochrome painting.
As with Nixon’s encyclopaedic approach to the ordering and classification of words in his concrete poems, Nixon’s exhibitions reveal a methodology that defines his identity as an artist-collector. In the development of a personal lexicon containing an archive of objects and a taxonomy and chronology of concepts, Nixon makes sense of what it means to be a curator of his own aesthetic and subjective experiences, “I gather paintings according to colour, objects, concepts, materials and methodologies and put them into sets and series.”235 This statement is significant to the relationship connecting cultural theory to the interpretation of monochrome painting because
231 Catharine Lumby, ‘John Nixon Interview’, On the Beach, no. 13, April 1988, Sydney, p. 5. 232 Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art 1863-1922, London: Thames and Hudson, 1993, p. 271. 233 John Nixon: Thesis, p. 12. 234 ibid. 235 Ben Curnow, ‘Setting things out: John Nixon’s experimental painting and object’, Hamish McKay Gallery, http:// www.hamishmckaygallery.com/main/artist_article.php?artist=John%20Nixon&artnum=1, (accessed 3 May 2008).
77 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT it clearly confirms what monochrome painters have been acknowledged for historically, namely, their objective and systematic approach to art making, but it also emphasises the way monochrome painting is employed by artists as a ground on to which they project their own subjectivities.
For most monochrome painters, colour is the most obvious sign that is used to represent and interpret subjectivity. Many monochrome painters have developed a strong interest in colour theory and this interest has become the lingua franca for artists working in this way. Nixon’s attitude to colour exemplifies this position:
I chose orange to be the basic colour. I chose it predominantly because no one in the history of twentieth century art that I knew of had done a body of work based on that colour. But rather than breaking something down, I wanted to build something up, and the colour is so bright and friendly in a way, glowing and warm. It seems to come at you.236
In a separate interview, Nixon qualifies his interest with this particular colour, “…orange was chosen because it is bright, uplifting and has an open range of associations.”237 According to the interpretation of colour theorists, orange represents friendship, sociability and gregariousness,238 and this outlook verifies Nixon’s position with regard to his interest in collaborating with other artists either in individual exhibitions or through the management of galleries and artist-run- spaces.239 For Nixon the monochrome holds great potential for individual representation in an information saturated world, “At this point in time, the monochrome allows a kind of free space in an otherwise over-polluted world. In a way, I see it as a kind of safe house. I see this as an existential position.”240 Nixon’s professional practice began in 1968, at a time when Postmodernism was just beginning, and through an analysis of a selection of references from his writings it becomes obvious that his practice has been informed by a distinctly Postmodern sensibility. Nixon’s practice strives to combine and apply the formalism of monochrome painting to a conceptual attitude that seeks to represent a raft of associations and subjective concerns, and it is the reconciliation of these particular concerns that define his practice as being critically engaged with cultural theory.
Matthew Deleget
The final artist to be discussed in this chapter is Matthew Deleget. In comparison to the other contemporary artists discussed, Deleget is by far the youngest. Born in Hammond, Indiana
236 Crawford, A., ‘Nixon’s Bright Orange Blossoms’, The Age, 19 June 2004 (online), http://www.theage.com.au/ articles/2004/06/16/1087244973552.html?from=storyrhs, (accessed 3 May 2008). 237 John Nixon, interviewed by Christopher Dean, in the exhibition catalogue, Bonde, Carstensen, Donaldson and Nixon, Artspace, Sydney, 1996, p. 3. 238 Besant & Leadbeater, Thoughtforms. 239 Nixon has been involved in running many galleries and artist-run spaces including the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and CBD Gallery, Sydney. 240 John Nixon, interviewed by Christopher Dean, in Bonde, Carstensen, Donaldson and Nixon.
78 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT in 1972, Deleget currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Significantly, unlike Hafif, Marioni and Nixon who, in various ways as indicated, have responded to the seismic shifts in consciousness that brought about by the rise of Postmodernism and cultural theory in the 1970s and 1980s, Deleget, reached maturity as an artist after the end of Modernism. For Deleget’s generation, Modernism is significantly remote from contemporary culture and, as a result, it can be referenced and appropriated as an art historical style. A key ingredient in the appreciation of Deleget’s practice is that the distinctions that once separated high art from popular culture are no longer relevant, and the artificial divisions that once divided abstraction and representation have become equally irrelevant.
Deleget has expanded upon the collaborative position developed by artists such as John Nixon in the 1970s. However, rather than creating physical networks through the establishment of traditional artist-run spaces, Deleget and his partner Rossana Martinez have created Minus Space which is an online curatorial and critical space that has taken the form of an extensive website. Although Minus Space began as a virtual project with the aim of presenting and promoting reductive and concept-based art, it also operates as an extensive archive that records contemporary and historical developments in abstraction, Minimalism, Conceptual Art as well as monochrome painting internationally.241 As stated on the Minus Space website, Deleget and Martinez’s aim is to showcase what is referred to as reductive art through the application of an “inclusive strategy that is baggage-free.”242 Through the inclusive presentation and promotion of many forms of reductive art from around the world, as well as the development of a highly detailed archive, Minus Space draws upon cultural theory through its application of a philological or genealogical method to interpret cultures from both a geographically decentred, as well as a historical, positions.
Since the early twentieth century, the history of the naming and classifying of non-objective art has been arbitrary and ambiguous. One of the first steps in the development of Minus Space was to agree on a term that could be used to define the scope and character of the project. The term reductive art was decided upon primarily because of its limited associations and connections with art historical movements and traditions such as abstraction, formalism, Minimalism and non-objective art. The term, ‘minus’ was used by writers such as Brian O’Doherty in the 1960s, and the inclusion of this word provides Minus Space its conceptual framework.243 As stated by Deleget on the Minus Space website, “Reductive abstraction is no longer ruled by the self-imposed limitations of utopias or orthodoxies, reductive art can be anything and can be about anything and I am deeply committed to a pluralistic approach.”244 Both Deleget’s practice as an individual
241 Many of the artists included in the Minis Space website reside outside of Europe and North America. 242 Matthew Deleget and Rossana Martinez, ‘About’, Minus Space, 2003-2010, http://www.minusspace.com/about/, (accessed 2 September 2008). 243 Brian O’Doherty, ‘Minus Plato’ in Gregory Battcock (ed.), Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co, 1986, pp. 251-255. 244 DelegetDeleget& & Martinez, ‘About,’‘About,’ ‘About,’ Minus Space.
79 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT artist, as well as his participation in the larger collaborative project of Minus Space, has been deeply informed by an openness that contradicts the totalising and essentialist theories and ideologies of Modernism. The contingency and subjectivity that characterises Deleget’s attitude towards the definition and promotion of a diversity of styles and propositions found within the broader term reductive art has put into practice many of the concerns that have been included within the scope and definition of cultural theory. On a philosophical level, Minus Space operates along the lines of a pragmatic free-space that resembles the theoretical position developed by American Postmodern and pragmatic thinkers such as John Dewey and Richard Rorty.245 Minus Space aims to present a view of reductive art that is not driven by a singular ideological or dogmatic position but is dedicated to the presentation and promotion of experimental contingencies in the broader field of reductive art.
With regard to his own practice as a painter and object-maker, Deleget says:
I freely sample, remix and often subvert my precedents and my work absorbs, digests and reacts to what I see and hear around me in my daily environment, urban culture, war, technology, disposable culture, materialism, architecture, music, sex, etc…246
The newly found freedom contained within Deleget’s sense of openness, as well as his critique of strictly self-referential formalism, has enabled him to conduct innovative experiments in the field of monochrome painting.
An example of Deleget’s combination of the ideas, values and attitudes is to be found in an experimental pink monochrome titled Pink Nightmare. In the context of Pink Nightmare, Deleget observes, “I have been thinking a lot about monochrome painting lately, in particular how rigidly dogmatic and downright macho it can be.”247 He subsequently adds, “I emasculated my monochrome by painting it a bubblegum pink and then beating the crap out of it with a hammer.”248 This aggressive, if not violently emotional, refutation of the dogma associated with monochrome painting is obviously fuelled by Deleget’s attempt to simultaneously test the limits of painting and then to assess the uneasy relationship between Modernism and masculinity from a position directly relating to the critical faculties of Postmodernism and cultural theory.
245 Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 246 Matthew Deleget, ‘Exhibition: Matthew Deleget, Daniel Levine & Tilman,’ Gallery Sonja Roesch, http://www. gallerysonjaroesch.com/2009_GSR_website/DELEGET_PR.pdf, 2009, (accessed 17 January 2009). 247 ibid. 248 ibid.
80 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT
Fig 10: Matthew Deleget, Pink Nightmare. 2007. Acrylic on panel hit with a hammer (45 x 60 cm). Collection of the artist, New York.
Modernist critics and commentators, such as Clive Bell, were critical of the artistic use of the colour pink for reasons discussed in chapter three. In an attempt to challenge the overtly masculine associations of Modernism, contemporary artists such as Deleget have chosen to explore pink for its ability to act as both a cipher and conduit opening up monochrome painting to a broad range of associations that would, during the era of Modernism, have been perceived negatively. A psychoanalytic reading of Pink Nightmare indicates that Deleget could be seen to be experiencing personal dilemmas with the formalist representation of masculinity. While from a sociological position, this process of destruction can be interpreted productively – not through Clement Greenberg’s notion of formalism but through the writings of Georges Bataille. In his book Visions of Excess249 Bataille compares Marcel Mauss’ anthropological studies of the economic customs of the Pacific North-West First Nations, including the concepts of exchange, reciprocity and sacrifice found in the custom of Potlatch,250 to capitalist notions of consumption. Through this culturally determined reading of Pink Nightmare it becomes apparent that Deleget’s unconventional
249 Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, Allan Stoekl (ed.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991, p 121. 250 Potlatch is the customary destruction of an individual’s wealth or that of a group.
81 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT interventions into monochrome painting can be interpreted as a remix of Greenberg’s formalism and Bataille’s concept of ritualistic destruction.
Through the anxieties contained in his paintings and writings, Deleget reveals that he is reconciling some of the cultural differences separating Modernism and Postmodernism as well as masculinity and femininity. It is this line of reasoning that has enabled Deleget to simultaneously establish a new and innovative position in relation to the history of monochrome painting by claiming, “Unlike Fontana and other precedents who pierced the surface of a painting in a tasteful, aestheticised way, I was determined to make something distasteful, even vulgar. For me, Pink Nightmare is a kind of exorcism.”251 In contrast to the importance placed on the rational masculine subject within the Modernist cannon, Deleget subverts Modernism by using the monochrome as a site for the projection and performance of his own subjective perspectives. Through the inclusion of contradictory semiotic codes (namely, the monochrome as a sign for masculinity and pink as a sign for femininity) and through a cathartic experience that includes smashing the surface of the monochrome with a hammer, Deleget develops a critique of the history of monochrome painting while simultaneously contributing to its history.
Through a discussion of the artworks and writingsof four contemporary monochrome painters, this chapter emphasises the idea that contemporary monochrome painting has evolved into an applied or open discipline as opposed to a pure or closed discourse. As discussed in chapter two, cultural theory is defined as an applied version of Postmodernism and one of its main aims is to qualify the status of individual subjectivities through the interpretation of cultural forms and conventions such as monochrome painting. As observations on the practices of the four artists contained in this chapter reveal, cultural theory can be used to identify and interpret the influence of gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity through the production of experimental monochromes. Examples of this process can be qualified through Marcia Hafif ’s acknowledgement of the influence of Julia Kristeva and Gilles Deleuze on her own writings, and through the interpretations that can be applied to Matthew Deleget’s monochrome Pink Nightmare using the writings of Clement Greenberg and Georges Bataille.
Having discussed the development of historical and contemporary monochrome painting in relation to modernist and Postmodernist interpretations chapter seven provides a historical account of colour theory, in relation to the way that the colour pink has been interpreted in the context of monochrome painting.
251 Matthew Deleget, ‘Pink Nightmare, 2007,’ Matthew Deleget, http://matthewdeleget.com/2009/05/subspecies- exhibition-2007/, 2007, (accessed 2 September 2008).
82 CHAPTER SEVEN
Cultural interpretations of the colour pink — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, John Gage, David Batchelor, Barbara Nemitz and Barbara Rose
For monochrome painters the exclusive use of pink over all other colours indicates a leap of faith asserting an unconventional departure from the narratives informing metaphysical Modernism and rational masculine-centric formalism.252 The discussion of artists’ writings and manifestos from the early twentieth century European avant-garde in chapter four affirms that, from a Modernist perspective, the primary colours (as well as black, white and gray) were given priority over secondary and tertiary colours. Consequently, during the era of Modernism, impure or diluted colours such as pink became highly undervalued or referred to in negative terms. When pink became the subject of monochrome painting it was frequently treated as a colour by any other name. As identified through the images of monochromes included in chapters four and six, until recently, the word ‘pink’ was frequently substituted with the names of alternative colours, for example, ‘rose’ in Yves Klein’s practice or ‘magenta’ as found in the titles of Joseph Marioni’s paintings. Even when the word ‘pink’ is enunciated as the title of a work of contemporary art, such as Matthew Deleget’s Pink Nightmare, it is treated negatively.253
Through a discussion of key literature samples spanning the past two centuries – starting with the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Itten and Joseph Albers – this chapter culminates with an analysis of contemporary interpretations of the colour pink by John Gage, David Batchelor, Barbara Nemitz and Barbara Rose. Through a discussion of the writings of a selection of contemporary theorists, the narrative of this chapter has been shaped by the increased significance of pink as a cultural signifier. A discussion of the current cultural status of the colour pink is developed towards the conclusion of this chapter through a discussion of Barbara Nemitz’s book titled Pink and Barbara Rose’s essay from the exhibition catalogue Monochromes from Malevich to the Present. This chapter concludes with the question, “Why has the colour pink remained marginalised in contemporary interpretations of monochrome painting?”
252 As interpreted in publications as far ranging as Maurice Tauchman’s catalogue essay The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985, Maurice Tuchman (ed.), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1986; Terry Smith’s Invisible Touch: Modernism and Masculinity, Sydney: Power Publications, 1997; Barbara Marshall’s Engendering Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994; and Mark A. Cheetham’s The Rhetoric of Purity: Essentialist Theory and the Advent of Abstract Painting, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 253 See my discussion of Matthew Delegate’s monochrome Pink Nightmare in chapter six.
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The assessment of the writings of successive generations of colour theorists, art historians and curators conducted in this chapter concludes that pink remains an under-researched and under-valued colour in the contexts of both colour theory and the art historical scholarship of monochrome painting. As a consequence of the historical interpretations of the colour pink stemming from colour theory, contemporary interpretations of monochrome painting have either neglected or overlooked the critical practices and specific experiments that have been conducted by monochrome painters using this colour. As a further consequence of the lack of critical literature informing the aesthetic or cultural significance of this colour, pink monochromes remain highly under-researched in contrast to monochromes produced using other colours.
As discussed in the introductory chapters of the thesis, the research methods informing The Pink Monochrome Project have been derived through the application of the critical frames of reference defined by cultural theory. Through a discussion of the critical methodologies and through them the intersections of cultural theory, colour theory and art history, this chapter provides new insights into the cultural significance of pink monochromes. An example of the cultural status of pink monochromes is to be found within the economic treatment of monochromes as commodities within the international art market, for example, the pricing of Yves Klein’s monochromes follows a particular structure with Gold being the most highly valued, followed by Blue which is then followed by Rose.254 This issue can be partly explained as a consequence of the way that pink is culturally undervalued, and at times trivialised, and also because of the way it remains under- theorised in relation to the historical trajectories of colour theory.255
Until recently, scant attention has been paid to the development of a critical discussion of pink and historically very few colour theorists have attempted more than a slight analysis of this colour. In contrast to other colours, the primaries in particular have been discussed in great detail by successive generations of artists and colour theorists. While Modernist commentators on colour theory sought to reconcile the positivism and mysticism that divided opinions and interpretations of colour, artists from the De Stijl movement argued “red, yellow and blue were the only colours since all others were derived from them.”256 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s writings influenced colour theorists during the era of Modernism; for example, pure or diluted colours, particularly secondary or tertiary colours, were dismissed as either “impure” or “weak” and historically a frequently held opinion has been that the “immixture, augmentation or combination of white arrests the active character of red.”257 In these instances, Modernism’s codification of the status and
254 Pierre Restany, Yves Klein, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982, p. 47. 255 John Gage, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism, London: Thames and Hudson, 1999, p. 13. Gage comments on this situation through a discussion of the use of gold and lapis lazuli or ultramarine in the representation of the Virgin Mary. 256 Bart van der Leck quoted in John Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999, p. 250. 257 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours, translated by Charles Lock Eastlake, Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1970, p. 309.
84 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT significance of pink becomes apparent and this can be qualified by the critical dismissal of pink as a colour of cultural significance. Many of the values associated with the religious, metaphysical or transcendental associations of colour locate pink and red as being associated with the body, the earth or emotion and sexuality while gold and blue are frequently associated with spirituality and intellect.258
The writings of theorists as wide ranging as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Itten and Joseph Albers tended to view colour with mistrust. Through a discussion of the narratives of many individual theories and systems of colour, pink is most widely viewed with suspicion. Studies of literature samples included in this chapter demonstrate that, during the era of Modernism, pink was treated as being unimportant and lacking in cultural significance and this attitude still shapes contemporary interpretations of the colour pink.
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when colour is discussed, it is frequently interpreted in negative terms, for example, Goethe viewed “colour as troubled light”259 and identified pink as being a “passive” or “weak” form of red;260 influenced by Goethe’s writings, Johannes Itten viewed pink as being an overly subjective colour that contains the properties of a “jealous mistress”;261 and following this position, Joseph Albers affirmed that colour is “deceptive” since “colour fools, seduces and is the most fascinating of the arts formal elements”.262 Most of the cultural and perceptual associations that theorists have used to define the colour pink tend to link it to what might be referred to as a chromatic form of “ambivalence.”263 Historically, pink has been more closely associated with emotion rather than reason,264 and until recently, discussions surrounding the colour pink have also connected it to the domain of popular culture rather than high art.265 In this way pink is frequently associated with the concepts and objects associated with the feminine, homosexual or kitsch, as well as the “disposable and trivial.”266
Cultural associations and prejudices in relation to the colour pink have shaped the discourse of colour theory since ancient times. The AncientRomans commonly used the term sub-rosa in reference to a lack of masculinity or confidence.267 More recent associations often connect the
258 Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, Thoughtforms, Wheaton, Illinois: Theosophical Publishing House, 1986. 259 Goethe, Theory of Colours, p. 325. 260 ibid. 261 Johannes Itten, The Art of Colour, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976, p. 25. 262 Frederick A. Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz, Joseph Albers: To Open Eyes, London: Phaidon, 2006, p. 195. 263 Barbara Nemitz (ed.), Pink: The Exposed Color in Contemporary Art and Culture, Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2006, p. 26. 264 See colour index, ‘Key to the meaning of colours’ in Besant & Leadbeater’s Thoughtforms, p. ?, where rose is listed as ‘unselfish affection’ and magenta as ‘pure affection.’ 265 Nemitz (ed.), Pink, p. 36. 266 David Batchelor, Chromophobia, London: Reaction Books, 2002, p. 27. 267 Gage, Colour and Meaning, p. 41.
85 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT colour pink to femininity, homosexuality, or to individuals or groups belonging to the political left. These cultural associations have further stigmatised this colour through the development of negative associations and stereotypes. In non-Western and pre-modern Western cultures, pink was once perceived as a symbol of masculinity and virility, although since the beginning of the twentieth century this position has now been largely replaced by alternative colours such as red and blue.268 The popular saying, ‘looking at the world through rose coloured glasses’ connotes the idea that pink depicts a delusional state of unreality and in this way “pink represents an emancipation from the burdens of reality and traditional norms.”269
Pink has also been perceived as a corrupt or contaminated colour. The admixture of white with a primary colour such as red has been identified as a form of contamination that renders both red and white impure. Successive generations of colour theorists have argued that red is contaminated with the addition of white and when white is mixed with red it renders it impure. One of the legacies of colour theory is that it has relegated pink to a zone of chromatic indeterminacy, existing in a space between impurity and contamination.
In nature pink has been linked to indeterminacy or transience, for example, sunrise or sunset. From a naturalistic perspective, pink has been seen as symbolic of a passing phase or a fleeting apparition that appears when light is emerging or fading.270 As a colour, pink is also associated with the body, namely skin and bodily orifices, and this serves to connect it as a cultural signifier to love, erotica and memory.271 As a descriptor many artists and colour theorists have avoided using the word pink. This is demonstrated through the inclusion of a multiplicity of substituted terms including rose, magenta, ruby, scarlet, crimson and carmine. Through neglect or substitution, pink exists as an indeterminate colour and according to colour theory it remains an enigma, a colour by any other name.
The interplay between colour and form plays a special role in identifying the relationship between the uses of pink in the context of monochrome painting. Where as form has been traditionally associated with masculinity, colour has been associated with femininity.272 Clive Bell observed that although “pink tends to weaken a composition” it can be redeemed “only when it is used as an attribute of form.”273 This classic formalist equation is made problematic through the interpretation of monochrome painting where the artwork’s colour doubles as its form. As a consequence of visual experiments in the manipulation and control of colour by formal means, artists and designers
268 ibid p. 28. In traditional Japanese culture pink was frequently associated with masculinity. 269 Nemitz (ed.), Pink, p. 36. 270 ibid p. 34. 271 ibid p. 32. 272 David Batchelor, Colour, Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2008, p. 58. 273 Clive Bell, ‘The Aesthetic Hypothesis’ in Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison (eds.)Modern Art and Modernism, London: Harper and Row, 1984, p. 69.
86 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT have attempted to reverse or negate the “unreliability, randomness, autonomy, superficiality and supplementary cosmetic nature of colour.”274 To many of the early practitioners and theorists of abstraction, the power, autonomy and arbitrariness of colour could only be avoided, controlled or manipulated through the application and domination of line and form. Kandinsky’s frequently used quote, “In art and in life we must search for a dominant form,”275 affirms the Modernist ideal that an emphasis on form and the doctrine of formalism are the most fundamental considerations in the development of a work of art.
In an attempt to universalise and neutralise the cultural effects of colour, artists such as Piet Mondrian believed that in “the new plastics abstract colour will be meaningless to subjective vision: abstract colour omits the individual expression of emotion.”276 Theo van Doesburg expressed a similarly formalist position when he declared, “colour merely serves to hide construction.”277 For contemporary theorists such as David Bachelor, the wholesale fear of colour, particularly during the era of Modernism, led to a series of purges that either attempted to control, or completely omit, colour from art. Batchelor labours on this issue throughout his book Chromophobia by claiming that colours such as pink proved to be particularly problematic and were often viewed by Modernist practitioners and theorists of abstraction as “foreign bodies” or as “contagions.”278
Although only four of the ten artists included in this thesis have produced what might broadly be defined as pink monochromes, most notably Yves Klein, Agnes Martin, Marcia Hafif and Matthew Deleget, other artists such as Kazimir Malevich and Ad Reinhardt produced both abstract and representational works that included large areas of pink. As discussed in chapter four, Malevich used pink in several key representational works to depict notions of femininity, domesticity and commodification279 while Reinhardt included rectangular fields of pink within his geometric abstractions of the late 1940s and early 1950s as a chromatic counterpoint to his use of primary colours as well as black and white. As a reaction to Malevich’s formal and chromatic experiments, Vladimir Tatlin discouraged younger artists such as Alexandr Rodchenko from being influenced by the older artist’s formulation of Suprematism because he perceived it to be overly subjective when contrasted to the more rationalistic and objectively scientific concept of Productivism280 an issue that underscores the humanistic principles of Malevich’s practice. Similarly, Clement Greenberg dismissed Reinhardt’s paintings as being soft, feminine and weak, an apparently personal critique that attempted to undermine Reinhardt’s masculinity as well as the critical basis
274 Batchelor, Colour, p. 19. 275 Wassily Kandinsky, Point and Line to Plane, New York: Dover Publications, 1979, p. 113. 276 Batchelor, Colour, p. 70. 277 ibid p. 85. 278 Bachelor, Chromophobia, p. 27. 279 Nearly all of Malevich’s pink paintings were produced before 1917. This can be observed through a study of a his collected works. See Kazimir Malevich 1878-1935, Jeanne D’Andrea (ed.), The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, Los Angeles, 1990. 280 Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art 1863-1917, London: Thames and Hudson, 1993, p. 128.
87 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT of his artistic practice.281 Through an examination of the attitudes of Tatlin and Greenberg, the theoretical interpretations surrounding the colour pink in relation to the practice of monochrome painting foregrounds an uneasy relationship. In order to qualify these prejudices it is relevant to ask the question, “Why was the colour pink marginalised in the discourses of Modernism?”
As discussed in previous chapters, pink was frequently held with great suspicion and marginalised by successive generations of artists and theorists, particularly during the era of Modernism, because as an individual colour pink was perceived as being problematic because of its association with notions of femininity, impurity and weakness. Within the Modernist canon, “form was seen to be the essence.”282 While Modernism and formalism prioritised “heterosexual masculinity as a historical narrative,”283 the disassociation of formalism from the representation of subjectivity only goes part of the way towards explaining the reason why “colour prejudices”284 have excluded pink monochromes from occupying a key role in the history of Western non-objective art. Aside from exclusively interpreting colour from the interrelated positions of sexuality and gender, it is also important to consider the impact that class-consciousness had on the production of artworks during the early twentieth century. Although it is beyond the scope of the thesis to discuss the relationship between colour and economics in any detail, it is useful to observe that class-consciousness did play a role in the avoidance of pink by monochrome painters. As discussed by Simon Schama, pink is a colour associated with the aristocracy and decadence285 and it is this secondary factor that must be taken into account when assessing the situation as to why pink monochromes were not produced by the emergent avant-gardes during or shortly after the Russian Revolution. Due to the direct influence of Marxist theory on the development of Constructivism and for historical, economic and political reasons (such as the eventual globalisation of capitalist economics), this study reveals that pink monochromes were not produced until after 1945.
Commencing with an evaluation of the writings of Goethe, the following observations contained in this chapter provide a detailed chronological analysis of the ‘colour prejudices’ found within the history of colour theory that delimit the interpretation of colour. In the context of the cultural interpretations of David Batchelor, the following discussion of a selection of writings is conducted as a case study from the critical perspective of cultural theory.
281 Clement Greenberg, The Collected Essays and Criticism: Modernism with a Vengeance 1957-1969, vol. 4, John O’Brian (ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 254. 282 Smith, In Visible Touch, p. 7. 283 ibid. 284 Batchelor, Chromophobia, p. 28. 285 The Power of Art, DVD, BBC Warner, London, 2007. Schama connects the colour pink to representations of luxury and decadence through a discussion of eighteenth century French art, in particular Jean-Honore Fragonard’s The Swing, 1767.
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Goethe
Goethe’s system of colour theory had a direct influence on the development of historical abstraction via the writings of Theosophical commentators who combined and synthesised his interpretations of ancient and modern colour systems.286 Goethe’s analysis was primarily based on his own personal observations and practical experiments and he frequently emphasised the idea that colour appreciation is determined by associations or more precisely by “the subject – the eye itself.”287 Much of Goethe’s colour nomenclature depended on his use and application of key binary terms such as active/passive, strong/weak and plus/minus. While red is seen as being active, the application or mixture of it with white was said to “arrest the active character of red.”288 Goethe defined rose as “a soft red” and pink as “retiring.” In a most revealing quote Goethe comments:
The colours on the active side when placed next to black gain energy, those of the passive side lose. The active conjoined with white and brightness lose strength, the passive gain in cheerfulness. Red with black appears dark and grave; while mixed with white it appears gay.289
From the position of cultural theory, Goethe’s comments can be interpreted as the embodiment of Cartesian binary systems. In relation to the artificial construction and classification of dialectical oppositions, the Cartesian model that Goethe developed is a dialectical pattern of active/passive, scientific/mystical and reason/emotion.
As is the case with Goethe, Johannes Itten’s interpretation of the function of colour makes reference to earlier scientific systems such as those by Newton. Itten’s subtitle for The Art of Color – ‘The subjective experience and objective rationale of color’ – synthesises the interpretation of subjective and objective positions. Although he makes no direct reference to the colour pink in this book, Itten cautions the viewer of the fallibility of subjective expression, “…experiences in subjective colour should be initiated very carefully. Any suggestion that subjective color may reveal character or modes of thought should be avoided.”290 Itten then argues that artists need to be reminded about the rules he establishes for the subjective use of colour that enable professional fine artists to transcend the work of “decorators, children, the uneducated and folk artists.”291 As a reaction to the attitudes contained in comments such as these, the critical methodology of cultural theory holds the potential to deconstruct the apparently negative associations connecting colour to individual subjectivities and cultural specificities. It would not be until the 1970s that a
286 Kandinsky acknowledged Besant & Leadbeater’s Thoughtforms in his writings. See Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, London: Tate publishing, 2006, pp. 4-12. 287 Goethe, Theory of Colours, p. 1. 288 ibid p. 309. 289 ibid p. 325. 290 Itten, The Art of Color, p. 37. 291 ibid.
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Postmodern attitude to colour theory would be developed by theorists such as John Gage with the aim of interpreting colour historically and culturally.
Josef Albers expanded upon Itten’s metaphysical discussion of colour and his classes were influenced by the psychological interpretations of what he referred to as the “behaviour of colour.”292 Theoretically, Albers based his system on the writings of Wilhelm Worringer, Heinrich Wolfflin and Rudolf Arnheim,293 while his colour courses were based on his own personal observations of the interaction of colour. Albers’ writings can be interpreted as applied studies and observations of Goethe’s theories and his students became well versed in understanding the formal and optical, as opposed to social or cultural, understanding of colour. From the perspectives of cultural theory, Albers’ curriculum involved the disassociation of colour from representation and it is this issue that remains the greatest limitation to his pedagogical method, a limitation that shaped the narrative of his major publication Interaction of Color.294 Much of Albers teaching centred around what he called, “the pictorial tensions and relationships created by color behaviour.”295 His interpretation of the interaction of colour was derived from Goethe’s system of binary oppositions that related to the delineation of a highly codified system of values, contrasts and colour relativity.296 Albers’ systematic approach to teaching was aimed at revealing the “universal laws of design”297 and through his classes he discouraged students from including external or extrinsic references such as the representation of their personal subjectivities or cultural contingencies.
By the 1970s a new generation of colour theorists started to discuss the interpretation of colour in a more open and historically informed way. John Gage’s encyclopaedic Color and Culture presents a genealogical analysis of the role of colour in Western culture from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth century.298 Gage’s narrative avoids being constrained by a reductive or prescriptive monolithic system, as was the case with Itten’s and Albers’ descriptions of colour. The significant innovation throughout Gage’s discussion of colour is that it looks at the interpretations of colour not from personal observations or from the perspective of a single theory but from a historically informed genealogy. Gage’s methodology parallels the philological or genealogical method commonly used to describe the relativity of historical and cultural perspectives, a position that also informs the interpretative methods of Postmodernism and cultural theory.299 An example of Gage’s culturally informed methodology is contained in his book, Color and Meaning: Art, Science
292 Horowitz & Danilowitz (eds.), Josef Albers: To Open Eyes, p. 54. 293 Heinrich Wolfflin (1864-1945) was a Swiss art theorist who developed an objective system of classifying principles to interpret art. Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) applied perceptual psychology to his interpretation of art. 294 Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975. 295 Horowitz & Danilowitz (eds.), Josef Albers: To Open Eyes, p. 197. 296 ibid p. 195. 297 ibid p. 75. 298 Gage, Color and Culture. 299 Gary Gutting, Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Scientific Reason, New York: The Syndicate Press, 1991.
90 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT and Symbolism, a publication that focuses on the examination and interpretation of colour in the context of its associated cultural meanings.300 Gage’s encyclopaedic publication maintains that colour is not just optical or subjective but functions as a language. Early on in the introduction to Colour and Meaning he reveals that his methodology has been informed by Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction. For Gage the representational potential of colour exists not only in its historical relationship to science or art but through a combination of the two. Through his treatment of colour, Gage circumvents the reductive system of binary oppositions that have shaped the attitudes, definitions and interpretations of colour since Goethe. Critically, for this research project, Gage places a particular emphasis on the ability for colour to represent subjectivities such as those relating to identity and gender.
Over the past decade the study of colour has become an increasingly important topic in both art schools and in the artistic community at large. Over the past decade a recent generation of practicing artists and colour theorists, most notably David Batchelor, has influenced younger generations of artists and designers. As is the case with both Johannes Itten and Josef Albers, Batchelor’s art practice has contributed directly to his writing as a colour theorist. Like Gage’s approach to colour, Batchelor’s writings do not attempt to develop a singular chromatic system but emphasise an attitude of cultural inclusivity. Batchelor’s earlier publication, Chromophobia, which takes the form a small book with a pink cover, analyses what the author refers to as the history of “colour prejudices.” 301 Contained in this book is a sustained critique on the treatment and conventionalisation of colour by theorists over the past two centuries. The main focus of Batchelor’s commentary involves a discussion of the various attempts by Modernist colour theorists to “purge colour from art” for example, as discussed with reference to the Purism Manifesto.302 Throughout Chromophobia, Batchelor develops a wholesale critique of the mistrust of colour as a subjective variable or contaminant that manifested itself in the historical avant-garde perceiving it as inessential, cosmetic or as an aberration that needs to be either eliminated or controlled through the application of form.303 Batchelor reminds his readers that, from a rationalistic perspective, colour appears to be a “foreign body” or a “contagion” that has historically been associated with the “oriental, feminine, infantile, vulgar, pathological, neurotic or intoxicated.”304 As an artist and colour theorist, Batchelor’s critique parallels many of the objectives of cultural theory in its attempt to reprise the negative stereotypes and essentialist interpretations that have surrounded colour during the era of Modernism.
300 Gage, Colour and Meaning. 301 Batchelor, Chromophobia, p. 27. 302 Charles Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier) and Amedee Ozenfant, ‘Purism’ in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (eds.), Art in Theory 1900-1990, Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishers, 1992, pp. 237-240. 303 ibid. 304 ibid.
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From the positions of Gage and Batchelor, an essentialist reading of monochrome painting would follow the line of reasoning that the interpretation of a particular colour would be delimited by the shape, size and flatness of the canvas support. For monochrome painting, the most obvious and elementary shape employed by generations of artists is the square – a format that contravenes the traditions of portraiture and landscape. According to formalist interpretations, it is the size, shape or physical context of a monochrome, as characterised by the installation of a particular work or group of works, that holds the potential to communicate the visual impact of any given colour. Through the studio component of this research project the production, installation and exhibition of monochromes confirms Gage’s and Batchelor’s observations regarding the inability of a purely formal position to adequately articulate the cultural meanings and associations of colour. In contrast to a formal position, the readings and associations attached to a culturally informed treatment of colour opens an infinitely more expansive approach to the interpretation of colour. Examples of the application of Batchelor’s culturally informed interpretative model can be applied to Kazimir Malevich’s withdrawal from using the colour pink after the political upheavals in Russia in 1917, a situation that can be described as a form of socio-economic ‘chromophobia.’ Conversely, Ad Reinhardt’s overtly personal form of ‘chromophobia’ led to a situation where he avoided colour entirely and decided to express his subjective responses to art through his writings and cartoons.
Contained in his subsequent book, Colour, Batchelor makes the observation, “…over the last century the discourse on colour has been, for the most part, a discourse of reflection, observations, asides and remarks.”305 For Batchelor the failure of the scientific-rationalistic systems and theories of colour lies in their attempts to establish and codify the laws of colour. As he observes, this has resulted in the creation of a series of “polyphonic, episodic, fragmentary and arbitrary opinions” about how colour interacts. 306 Most of the wide selection of quotations that Batchelor includes at the beginning of Colour treat it negatively, for example, Charles Blanc’s comment that, “Colour is the peculiar characteristic of the lower form of nature” and Naum Gabo and Anton Pevsner’s opinion that, “Colour is accidental and has nothing in common with the innermost essence of things.” In contrast to these interpretations, the writings of more recent thinkers on colour view its independence and arbitrariness more favourably, for example, Stephen Melville’s comment that “Colour appears as an unthinkable scandal” and Derek Jarman’s that, “Colour seems to have a Queer bent.”307
As an artist Batchelor’s aim is to foreground rather than repress the subjective interpretations of colour in art. This approach may be compared to the theories of the contemporary German artist Andreas Exner and his notion of applied or everyday monochromes that Alex Cole has analysed
305 David Batchelor, Colour, p. 15. 306 ibid p. 19. 307 ibid p. 3.
92 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT with reference to the writings of Henri Le Febvre and Michael de Certeau. Cole states, “Batchelor’s photographs and writings situate how we sit or even how we sleep on the monochrome.”308 Rather than attempting to develop an oppositional critique of form and colour or art and design within a binary system, as theorists of colour did during the era of Modernism, Batchelor believes that form and colour operate on decorative, structural and cultural levels and it is this more inclusive approach to interpreting the many interactions of colour that enables contemporary artists to effectively communicate cultural themes including gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity.
During the early stages of writing and researching this thesis in 2006, two books were published that tangentially discussed the relationship between monochrome painting and the colour pink. The first was an anthology of essays edited by Barbara Nemitz titled, Pink: The Exposed Colour in Contemporary Culture, and the second was Barbara Rose’s catalogue for the exhibition, Monochromes from Malevich to the Present. Nemitz’s book can be clearly identified as an example of cultural theory because it examines the cultural associations surrounding the use and interpretation of the colour pink from the perspective of what the author refers to as an “intercultural analysis.”309 In contrast, Rose’s exhibition catalogue is a more conventional art historical study. The final section of this chapter discusses the innovations and limitations of these publications in relation to the aims of The Pink Monochrome Project.
As an exercise in experimental publishing, Pink combines a critical approach derived from technical philosophy and art history but directs these ideas towards the discussion of a broad spectrum of objects and artworks. As a cultural object, the book itself is bound using a pink velvet cover linking the style of the publication to its content. The essays contained in Pink serve to apply the way that cultural theory can be used effectively to interpret that particular colour. A discussion of Yves Klein and Marcia Hafif ’s pink monochromes is included in Nemitz’s book and their pink monochromes are interpreted in the context of a range of contemporary cultural associations. The cultural connotations surrounding the interpretation of pink are questioned in Nemitz’s preface and essay titled ‘Pink-The Exposed Color’. Two of Nemitz’s propositions that are relevant to my own research question are, “Why do so many people have little regard for pink and why is it subject to taboos?” and “Why has pink failed to play a prominent role in serious art discourse?”310 Although Nemitz raises these and other questions they remain largely unanswered. The general conclusion of the various narratives contained within the book is that pink remains ambivalent and marginalised because it is often associated with the emotions as opposed to reason, and popular culture as opposed to high art.311 The aim of this chapter is to answer these questions from the positions of colour theory and through a study of monochrome painting.
308 Alex Cole, ‘Monochromes of the Everyday: David Batchelor and Liam Gillick,’ Parachute (Canada), No. 100, October-December, 2005, p. 99. 309 Nemitz (ed.), Pink, p. 24. 310 ibid p. 25. 311 ibid p. 41.
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In 2006 the American art historian Barbara Rose organised an exhibition that was accompanied by a major publication focusing on the role that monochrome painting has played in the development of modern and contemporary art since the early years of the twentieth century. The title for both the exhibition and the catalogue was Monochromes from Malevich to the Present. As is the case with the exhibition, the catalogue is structured according to specific colours with each chapter focusing on the discussion of a single colour. The sequence of these chapters is: black, red, blue, gold, silver and white. Within these chapters, the work of a selection of monochrome painters is discussed chronologically.
One of the shortcomings of Rose’s critical position is that it initially aims to present a comprehensive historical overview of the main chromatic trajectories of monochrome painting but fails to achieve this goal because of the omission of the work of many significant monochrome painters working outside of Europe and North America. Rose’s publication also omits a selection of colours, such as pink, that have been widely used in historical and contemporary monochrome painting.312 Rose’s omission of a separate chapter for pink monochromes is compounded by the placement of a selection of pink monochromes, most notably Yves Klein’s work under the chapter titled ‘red.’
Aside from this methodological oversight, Rose’s appraisal of monochrome painting confirms that the use of a single colour emphasises the “signifying properties of colour, experiences, memories and sensations.”313 Rose’s analysis confirms that the pure use of colour via monochrome painting presents a situation that enables both the artist (as producer) and viewer (as interpreter) to conceive the “specific and universal, tangible and immaterial” and “via chance, environmental interaction, time and participation of the viewer, monochromes make concrete an existential relationship to the world.”314 Rose’s essay asserts that the heuristic complexity of monochrome painting centres around a paradox that monochromes contain multiple meanings and that a singular or ideologically driven position is limited to interpreting monochromes as either absolute or contingent, or alternatively, objective or subjective.315
Through a discussion of a selection of interpretations relating to the cultural associations of pink, it can be concluded that as a colour it has been interpreted negatively for hundreds of years, possibly since ancient times, and increasingly through the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. Although the status of pink as a signifier in popular culture has been radically reappraised in recent years – as demonstrated by the discussions contained in Nemitz’s book – the reappraisal of pink within the discourse of art history remains limited – as demonstrated by Rose’s treatment of pink monochromes. The following two haptersc apply the philosophical debates and art historical
312 Significantly, for this thesis, the inclusion of pink as a separate and independent colour has not been accorded a separate chapter in Rose’s book. 313 Barbara Rose (ed.), Monochromes: From Malevich to the Present, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, p. 76. 314 ibid p. 127. 315 ibid p. 79.
94 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT oversights discussed throughout the thesis to the development of the studio component of The Pink Monochrome Project.
95 CHAPTER EIGHT
Three contemporary exhibitions of monochrome painting: True Colours, Sydney College of the Arts Gallery, 1998; Monochromes, University of Queensland Art Museum, 2000; and Minus Space, PS1, 2008.
The final chapters of the thesis examine the contexts that have informed the development of the studio component of the research project, The Pink Monochrome Project. Chapter eight discusses three group exhibitions where I have exhibited pink monochrome paintings while chapter nine summarises the results of the research and the appendix discusses the development of the studio component of The Pink Monochrome Project. The group exhibitions discussed in this chapter are True Colours, Sydney College of the Arts Gallery, 1998, Monochromes, University of Queensland Art Museum, 2000, and Minus Space, PS1, 2008.
In 1998 I curated and participated in True Colours, an exhibition that was held at the newly opened Sydney College of the Arts Gallery. The curatorial rationale for the exhibition examined the relationship connecting individual colours used by monochrome painters to the way that these particular colours were chosen to represent the subjectivities of individual artists. Each of the eight artists involved in the exhibition were asked to select a colour that was central to their art practice or played a special role in their personal or professional lives. The artists included in True Colours were: Stephen Bram, Vicente Butron, Christopher Dean, ADS Donaldson, Marco Fusinato, John Nixon, Rose Nolan and Gary Wilson.316
The curatorial objective informing this exhibition was to develop a comparative context based on the way that individual artists chose to employ a specific form of colour symbolism. The curatorial methodology informing the exhibition was inspired by my interest in cultural theory and it aimed to locate the interpretation of individual artists’ subjectivities within the practice of monochrome painting. Once all of the works had been positioned within the gallery space it soon became apparent that each artists’ selection of a specific colour was highly subjective and that the issue of personal choice played a role in identifying the way that each of the artists treated colour as a symbol to represent their own individual subjectivities and cultural specificities.317
316 The colours selected by individual artists are as follows: Stephen Bram (black), Vicente Butron (blue), Christopher Dean (pink), ADS Donaldson (green), Marco Fusinato (red), John Nixon (orange), Rose Nolan (white) and Gary Wilson (yellow). 317 True Colours revealed that contemporary monochrome painting has the potential to develop connections linking colour choices to individual artists’ subjectivity.
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In the course of preparing the explanatory essay, it became apparent that each artists’ individual choice of colour was more arbitrary than it initially appeared. As the curator, my original assumption was that the artists’ treatment of colour would be highly systematic whereas in reality it was highly subjective. For example, ADS Donaldson’s use of green related directly to his interest in golf,318 whereas Vicente Butron’s choice of blue represented an aspect of his Catholic upbringing in the Philippines.319 In retrospect, True Colours can be seen to have predicted the writings of the colour theorists discussed in chapter seven – in particular, John Gage, David Batchelor and Barbara Nemitz – because its aim was to personalise the formal use of colour.
The second exhibition to be discussed in this chapter is titledMonochromes and was curated by David Pestorius at the University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane in 2000. As part of a series of exhibitions examining non-objective art, Monochromes was the second instalment of a two-part project that commenced with an earlier exhibition titled, Geometric Painting in Australia 1941-1997. The aim of the exhibition was to examine the history of monochrome, or single-colour painting, in Australia. In addition to this group exhibition, the New York painter Joseph Marioni also held a solo exhibition, Four Paintings, in a separate gallery adjoining the Museum. As a part of the exhibitions public program, Marioni delivered a lecture on his work.320
As an exhibition, Monochromes was promoted as being the first in-depth historical survey of monochrome painting to be held in Australia and contained the work of fifty artists including Peter Booth, Ian Burn, Vicente Butron, A.D.S. Donaldson, Robert Hunter, John Nixon and Robert Rooney. 321 Rather than appearing uniform or homogenous in any way, the exhibition revealed the enormous diversity contained within what might be defined as monochromatic art. From a curatorial perspective, Monochromes emphasised divergences rather than continuities as well as contingencies over orthodoxies. The curatorial latitude of the exhibition became a point of debate and in many ways the expectations surrounding the uniformity, as opposed to the diversity, of the exhibition was widely discussed.
318 True Colours, Sydney College of the Arts Gallery, Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney, Sydney, 1998, p. 2. Donaldson’s work consisted of a three dimensional construction placed centrally on the floor of the gallery. The work was constructed using timber supports and horizontally mounted glass panels and the underside of the glass panels were painted bright green using enamel paint. The catalogue notes state that Donaldson made reference to the phrase ‘putting on glass’, a concept that links this work to golf. 319 ibid. Colour theory systems often relate blue to spirituality. In Catholicism, blue denotes purity and is used in the clothing of the Virgin Mary. Vicente Butron’s use of blue is connected to this issue. 320 My lecture notes indicate that Joseph Marioni compared the finely ground particles used in his pigments to those used in cosmetics. Joseph Marioni, artist talk, University Art Museum, Brisbane, 7 December 2000. 321 See essay by Ross Searle in exhibition catalogue, Joseph Marioni: Four Paintings, University Art Museum, Brisbane, 2000, p. 7.
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The essays contained in the exhibition catalogue forMonochromes discussed the evolution of monochrome painting from a wide range of perspectives.322 Rather than presenting a uniform vision, the interpretations and explanations of the exhibition mirrored the diversity and divergences contained in the artworks themselves. David Pestorius’ catalogue essay discusses the way that monochrome painting simultaneously affirms and departs from Clement Greenberg’s interpretation of formalism. From an audience perspective, Monochromes remained an open-ended field of investigation that affirmed Greenberg’s fascination with “flatness and the delimitation of flatness”323 yet many of the works in the exhibition made overt reference to the interpretation of subjectivities, identities and locations. As with True Colours two years earlier, the unexpected consequence of Monochromes was that it developed a cultural interpretation of monochrome painting. Affirming this situation, most of the works contained in this exhibition introduced elements into monochrome painting that contradicted “the exclusion of those things not properly within the domain of painting.”324
As observed by Andrew McNamara in his essay ‘Monochromes: The Beautiful Sublime?’, “It soon becomes evident that no one consistent approach or attitude prevails; no two monochrome practices seem quite alike.”325 Although some of the artists participating in Monochromes drew upon a predominantly formalist position,326 such as Joseph Marioni, others like Ian Milliss presented an internal critique of monochrome painting in the form of a conceptual floor piece.
One of the criticisms of Monochromes was that the material basis of the exhibition was far too broad. Perhaps the exhibition would have been more precise had it focused on painting, or at least two-dimensional work, rather than sculpture and installation practices. This would have had the effect of limiting the physical divergences of the exhibition. Monochromes demonstrated that the concept or idea of a monochrome is only tangentially related to the actuality of a monochrome as a physical entity in the world. The practical outcome of the exhibition is that most of the artworks employed a form of nominalism most commonly associated with readymades, aligning them to a philosophical activity that enables these works to be interpreted as representations of monochromes rather than monochromes themselves.327 One of the outcomes of Monochromes is that many of the artists who participated in the exhibition produced artworks using formal devices such as colour, shape, size or texture to develop a commentary on the historical position
322 David Pestorius’ introductory essay contains a brief discussion of the work of most of the artists contained in the exhibition and reveals that, in various ways, each of these artists’ works aims to represent a particular issue. Pestorius in Joseph Marioni: Four Paintings, pp. ? 323 Clement Greenberg, ‘Modernist Painting’ in Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison, (eds.), Modern Art and Modernism, London: Harper and Row, 1984, p. 8. 324 David Pestorius, ‘Monochromes’ in Monochromes, David Pestorius (ed.), University Art Museum, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, 2001, p. 15. 325 Andrew McNamara, ‘Monochromes: The Beautiful Sublime?,’ ibid. p. 41. 326 ibid. p. 53. 327 Thierry de Duve, Pictorial Nominalism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991, p. 143.
98 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT of monochrome painting or to articulate an aspect of their individual subjectivity or cultural specificity and consequently it was widely acknowledged that this exhibition served to abandon a traditional model of Modernist-formalism.328
The final and most recent exhibition to be included in this chapter is Minus Space an event that was held at PS1 in Brooklyn, New York from November 2008 to March 2009. This exhibition was curated by Phong Bui and named after the Brooklyn based artist run-space, Minus Space, and brought together an extremely wide selection of what is referred to as reductive art from many parts of the world. Whereas True Colours included artists exclusively from Sydney and Melbourne, and Monochromes brought together artists from many parts of Australia (including Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Hobart and Brisbane) and Europe (including Germany, Denmark, and the UK), Minus Space presented a wide selection of artists from around the world including North America, South America, Asia, Australia and Europe. The scope and scale of this exhibition affirmed the existence of a wide diversity of reductive art forms including monochrome painting from around the world. On a theoretical level, the curatorial methodology informing the exhibition included a wide selection of art that aimed at mapping difference rather than presenting a unified or homogenous survey of reductive art. Rather than attempting to reproduce the paradigm of Modernist formalism, the exhibition emphasised the way that participating artists were facilitated in the presentation of their individual subjectivities and cultural specificities.329
The outcome of these three selected exhibitions is that they increased the level of pluralism and inclusiveness currently informing the production, promotion and interpretation of monochrome painting within Australia and internationally. As experimental models, these exhibitions have provided contemporary practitioners working in the field of contemporary monochrome painting with the opportunity to produce and exhibit new works that challenge many of the art historical conventions informing the literature that has often defined this type of practice.330 With the increasing emphasis that has been placed on the capacity for monochrome painting to operate in philosophically, historically and culturally engaged ways, these selected exhibitions have provided practitioners with an opportunity to apply the methodologies of cultural theory to the production, exhibition and interpretation of contemporary monochrome painting in new and innovative ways.
328 This is made obvious through Jenny Watson’s figurative portrait of John Nixon standing against a yellow monochromatic ground, Andreas Exner’s highly personal use of recycled clothing and Mikala Dwyer’s monochromes made using nail polish. Discussed in David Pestorius’, ‘Monochromes’ in Monochromes, pp. 11-39. 329 ‘Minus Space, curated by Phong Bui, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center / A Museum of Modern Art Affiliate, Long Island City, NY’, Minus Space, http://www.minusspace.com/2008/10/ps1/, 2008, (accessed 16 June 2010). 330 For example John Golding’s, Paths to the Absolute, London: Thames and Hudson, 2002.
99 CHAPTER NINE
Conclusions and recommendations
The unexpected outcomes of this research project center around the difficulties in resolving the philosophical contradictions separating cultural theory from monochrome painting. The findings of this thesis are summarised with the idea that these contradictions can be resolved by examining the way cultural theory can be used to interpret monochrome painting as opposed to the way that cultural theory has, at some prior stage, specifically informed the production of monochrome painting. The identification of this issue focuses on models of interpretation as opposed to systems of production within the practice of monochrome painting. With this in mind, the thesis concludes with the idea that although cultural theory has influenced the production of monochrome painting considerably, as evidenced through the artists’ writings of Marcia Hafif and John Nixon, it holds a greater potential to influence the future direction of monochrome painting through the processes of interpretation. An example of this process is the way that Ad Reinhardt’s writings, posthumously published as Art as Art (discussed in chapter four), function as a document that has been reinterpreted in different ways by successive generations of art writers, historians and artists. However, the version of Reinhardt, and for that matter a long list of monochrome painters (including Kazimir Malevich, Yves Klein, John Nixon and Matthew Deleget), that cultural theory has the potential to identify, is that of the dandy, the ironist and the queer connoisseur.331 Regardless of the specific pathways through which the writings of these ten artists can be interpreted, the transformation of monochrome painting presents an enduring narrative that runs throughout this thesis and gains momentum around the discussion related to the longevity, diversity and transformation of this century-old artistic practice.
Expanding upon this observation, the study of the writings and practices of historical and contemporary monochrome painters contained in this thesis reveals a higher level of cultural diversity than initially anticipated. Rather than attempting to develop an autonomous or independent field of inquiry that serves to eliminate inconsistencies or arbitrariness332 the writings and practices of successive generations of monochrome painters have continuously sought to represent individual concerns and broader cultural issues, a position that was not fully anticipated at the start of the
331 Carter Ratcliff, ‘Dandyism and Abstraction in a Universe defined by Newton,’ Artforum, December 1988, pp. 82-89. 332 Clement Greenberg, ‘Modernist Painting’ in Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison (eds.), Modern Art and Modernism, London: Harper and Row, 1984, p. 6.
100 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT research project. Key to the secondary research questions contained in the thesis is the idea that the critical perspectives of practitioners of monochrome painting contradict many of the aims and ambitions of Modernism. In contrast to this historical situation, the writings of contemporary theorists of monochrome painting, such as Victor Burgin, Yves-Alain Bois, Thierry de Duve and Frances Colpitt, go part of the way towards developing an increased affinity with the character and relevance of monochrome painting through the representation of cultural specificities including gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity. Upon reflection, even this dialectical assessment appears overly simplistic and the relationship between formalism and cultural theory can be confirmed through the way that both discourses serve to present a ‘close’ as opposed to a ‘closed’ reading of their particular object of study.
A fuller recognition of the uneasy relationship separating Modernism and monochrome painting is yet another unexpected discovery of this research project. Whereas during the 1950s and 1960s formalist critics such as Clement Greenberg identified monochrome painting with the readymade, rather than with the broader field of abstraction, Michael Fried’s assessment of Joseph Marioni’s monochromes seem to recant Greenberg’s dismissive attitude towards Reinhardt’s monochromes by connecting them to nineteenth century painters such as Turner. Fried’s review of Marioni’s exhibition at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University confirms that Marioni’s paintings offer viewers a meditative and aesthetic quality that is not found in many other forms of contemporary art.333
Affirming this position is the way that the colour pink was treated negatively during the era of Modernism. Remarkably, after three decades of Postmodernism, the use of pink remains an enigma throughout many of the histories and criticisms informing monochrome painting. The overwhelmingly negative attitude towards the interpretation of pink by theorists of formalism, such as Clive Bell and Herbert Read, and also by historical colour theorists, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Itten and Josef Albers, was not fully anticipated at the start of the research project. A further issue that had to be taken into account while writing this thesis is the way that contemporary art historians such as Barbara Rose have continued with the perception of marginalizing the colour pink and excluding it from the history of monochrome painting.
The chapters relating to the art historical evolution of pink monochromes also reveal some unexpected results. As a chromatic signifier in the broader field of monochrome painting, Yves Klein’s contribution was the invention of the pink monochrome and this took place through his experiments using the colour rose in the early 1950s. The confirmation of this historical trajectory set into motion a secondary line of investigation within the thesis that asks “Why didn’t earlier artists, especially those from the Russian avant-garde, produce pink monochromes?” The application of an iconographic analysis of Kazimir Malevich’s pre-revolutionary figurative
333 Michael Fried, ‘Joseph Marioni: Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University’, Joseph Marioni, The Painter, http://www. tiac.net/~marioni/reviews.html, 1998 (date accessed: May 23, 2008).
101 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT paintings reveals that he virtually abandoned the use of pink after 1917. When this information is analysed from the perspective of cultural theory, for example through the writing of Simon Schama,334 it is evident that pink is a colour commonly used to signify not only femininity but also luxury and aristocracy and this explains why it was abandoned by Kazimir Malevich and also why it wasn’t used by monochrome painters until after the second world war with the globalization of capitalism.
From the perspective of a studio practitioner, the main outcomes of this research project are that, although at least four successive generations of monochrome painters extending from Yves Klein, Agnes Martin, Marcia Hafif and Matthew Deleget have produced pink monochromes, no individual monochrome painter has developed an art practice focusing exclusively on the colour pink. Through the identification of this epistemological gap in the evolution and development of monochrome painting, this thesis serves to present a series of case studies from which the writings and practices of historical and contemporary monochrome painters, including my own, function critically as samples of cultural theory.
334 The Power of Art, DVD, BBC Warner, London, 2007. Presented by Simon Schama.
102 APPENDIX
Pure and applied — The studio component of The Pink Monochrome Project
The first section of this chapter examines the chronological evolution of my studio practice in relation to the use of materials, fonts, typefaces, grids, format, frames, scale and technical processes. The second section of the chapter discusses the content of the text contained in the paintings in relation to the cultures and localities from where the references are derived. Through a discussion of individual paintings, as well as the broader studio component of The Pink Monochrome Project, these formal issues are interpreted from the perspectives of cultural theory.
My first series of pink monochrome paintings were produced in 1993.335 These early works are small in scale and each of the twelve paintings from the series measures twenty by twenty centimetres. These works were produced using flesh-coloured gloss enamel paint applied sparingly over a small individual carburettor gasket that had previously been affixed to the surface of the painting. During the late 1980s and early 1990s I collected these small gaskets from various Valiant cars that I had successfully or unsuccessfully attempted to repair. Through the course of time, these modest works came to influence the overall development of my art practice. Characterising these monochromes are two key concepts that can be identified as references to both subjective and formal paradigms, namely: the carburettor gasket as an example of applied, practical or everyday culture, and the monochrome itself which historically has been perceived as being an example of aesthetic purity, as discussed in detail in chapter three. From the perspectives of formalism and cultural theory, and also in terms of their concept and construction, these works are discussed as being simultaneously pure and applied.
In order to convert the individual gaskets into art they were bonded onto the underling canvas support using three thick coats of gesso. The surface of the paintings then became a type of relief collage that, when covered with a coat of flesh pink gloss enamel paint, emphasised the individual relief patterns on the surface of the paintings. It was directly through these early experiments that my current interest in researching the history and practice of monochrome painting originated.
335 Ten of these monochromes were included in a solo exhibition titled Gasket Monochromes at CBD Gallery, Sydney in 1994.
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Fig 11: Christopher Dean, Gasket Monochrome, 1993, enamel and automotive gasket on canvas, 20 x 20 cm. Collection of the artist.
During the early 1990s, while I was producing these small pink carburettor gasket monochromes, I was reading cultural theory and through these dual processes I began to represent my own individual subjectivity and cultural specificity through monochrome painting. The early pink monochromes can be seen to be representational in that they contain an object, namely a Carter and Ball carburettor gasket (chosen because it was close at hand and related to a particular hobby or interest that I have maintained throughout my life, namely old cars).336 The use of flesh-coloured pink contradicts the machine aesthetic of the gasket as well as the overtly masculine cultural associations of car culture. This particularly soft shade of pink was also chosen because of its chromatic associations with the human body.
As discussed with reference to the work of John Nixon and Matthew Deleget in chapter six, the 1990s was a time when monochrome painters in Australia and throughout the world were making paintings that served to function as commentaries on the history of monochrome painting itself. Throughout the thesis it has been observed that successive generations of monochrome painters often made references to the monochromes of earlier generations of artists. For example, Yves
336 Carter and Ball produced carburetor gaskets for Chrysler cars during the 1960s.
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Klein spoke disparagingly of Kazimir Malevich and even produced a satirical cartoon criticising the efforts of the earlier artist.337 More recently the writings of Matthew Deleget indicate that his monochrome, Pink Nightmare, aims to develop a critique of the masculine logic associated with Modernism in general and monochrome painting in particular.338 This historically engaged critical ingredient is important because it references the interpretative strategies employed by contemporary monochrome painters to facilitate the transformation of monochromes.
As early as 1993 I had already discovered that the more reduced – and by this measure, the more pure – a monochrome appeared, the more contaminated it became. Paradoxically, imperfections in the weave of a particular piece of canvas, or in the consistency and colour of a particular brand of paint, are dramatised and made palpably obvious through the physical results and consequences of this reductive quest for purity. These practical experiments stand in stark contrast to many of the theoretical writings surrounding monochrome painting that frequently attempt to explain these works from an exclusively spiritual or purely formal position.339
The other notable feature of my early experiments in monochrome painting was the recognition of the consequences of using collage and the implications associated with the application of pink. The inclusion of collaged elements has the effect of providing the works with a hand-made appearance and this makes each painting resemble a craft activity, in as much as the monochrome itself designates the semiotics of ‘high’ art. It also provides these works with an element of faktura,340 linking the paintings to the work of earlier generations of historical monochrome painters. While thinking through the implications of these studio experiments, and analysing the implications and contradictions involved in producing monochromes that combine ingredients from high art, popular culture and industrial production, I became aware that other monochrome painters from the past (such as Yves Klein and Ad Reinhardt) and contemporary monochrome painters (such as John Nixon and Andreas Exner)341 had also engaged with these particular issues. By identifying and interpreting this negative anomaly in positive terms, I arrived at the conclusion that the combination of pure and applied elements in a monochrome could be treated as being productive with regard to the potential for further experimentation. Through the identification of these contaminants – be they formal (for example objects and textures) or conceptual (namely historical discourses and cultural interpretations) – the ability for monochrome painting to be analysed through the critical mechanisms of cultural theory becomes greatly enhanced. Exner’s
337 Pierre Restany, Yves Klein, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982, p. 47. 338 Matthew Deleget, ‘Pink Nightmare, 2007,’ Matthew Deleget, http://matthewdeleget.com/2009/05/subspecies- exhibition-2007/, 2007, (accessed 2 September 2008). 339 For example, The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985, edited by Maurice Tuchman, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1986 and John Golding’s Paths to the Absolute, London: Thames and Hudson, 2002. 340 For the purposes of this discussion faktura is defined as texture. 341 Applied Monochrome Painting, essay by Andreas Exner, Museum Ludwig, Köln, Germany, 2007. Published by Walther Köning, p.? In his essay, Exner develops the term monochromy to redefine monochromes as active subjects rather than inert or passive objects.
105 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT applied monochromes are examples of monochrome painting that have been applied to everyday or worldly situations. These works are constructed using a painted shaped board that is installed into the window frames of cars.342
Fig 12: Andreas Exner, Applied Monochrome Painting. Pestorius Sweeney House, Brisbane, 2006, acrylic and board on cars, dimensions variable. Private collection.
Unlike earlier generations of monochrome painters who become involved in producing monochromes prior to the advent of Postmodernism, during the 1980s I was a student of Postmodernism and cultural theory. In response to my own personal and academic history, most of my early experiments in monochrome painting were an attempt to make explicit references to many of the issues that characterise the network of discourses associated with cultural theory. After making this initial series of pink gasket monochromes, the challenge was to develop a form of scholarship to locate these works in a historical and cultural framework. From a studio perspective, the challenge has been to sustain this position by producing monochromes that have the potential to draw upon a bundle of discourses relating specifically to the broader themes of cultural theory, including gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity, while still remaining, by
342 ‘Archive,’ David Pestorius Projects, http://www.davidpestorius.com/past.html, 8/2006, (accessed: 3 December 2009).
106 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT definition, single-colour paintings or monochromes. Peer assessment has played an important role in this affirmation and the inclusion of my pink monochromes in exhibitions, such as those discussed in chapter eight, has been a vital part of this process.
Throughout the 1990s, these experiments were taken further by broadening the range of materials used in the manufacture of the paintings themselves. By including collaged materials (such as d’oyleys), patterned or textured fabrics (such as second-hand bedspreads) and objects (such as mechanical components and replica war medals), I developed a form of monochromatic painting that became simultaneously abstract and representational.
Fig 13: Christopher Dean, D’oyley Monochrome, 1994, enamel and d’oyley on canvas, 30 x 30 cm. Collection of the artist.
From 1995 until 2005, I continued to explore the formally disruptive potential for collage in combination with monochromes and, throughout this decade, it took the form of relief text rather than objects. At this time, the use of textured text cut-outs proved to be the ideal vehicle for combining and resolving a range of apparently contradictory formal and conceptual issues. As an extension of the earlier collaged object monochromes, the more recent text monochromes assisted with the process of refining this concept and technique.
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Chronologically and stylistically, the text monochromes evolved directly out of the earlier gasket monochromes. Automotive gaskets are made using compressed cardboard or cork and are cut out by hand or machine in order to seal together two separate mechanical components usually made from metal. The process of cutting out gaskets led me to explore the use of stencilled cardboard text cut-outs and later felt cut-outs. As with the earlier collaged object monochromes, these more recent works are constructed using text cut from felt and embalmed beneath three layers of gesso. Many of the earlier text monochromes were completed using a final layer of gloss enamel paint, however, in 2001 I returned to using traditional artists’ oil paints. The reason for this was to provide the paintings with additional texture and to mimic the rough surface treatment of historical monochrome paintings, including the work of Kazimir Malevich and Yves Klein. The latter relief text monochromes are made using a typeface called Data 70. This particular typeface was invented by the British company Letraset in 1970 and is included in these paintings because of its capacity to enhance the structural or concrete quality of the painting’s design providing an overtly Modernist appearance. As this series evolved, the individual letters were placed closer together forming a grid pattern and this structural intervention gives the paintings a three dimensional appearance emphasising the constructed or architectural character of the text.
The use of three dimensional relief letters and numbers in these monochromes was directly influenced by concrete poetry. The combination of relief text and poetic references gives these works a sense of tension. This is achieved by combining the paintings hardened relief surfaces with a sense of semantic instability that is contained within the narrative structure of the text. An example of a painting from this series is Forget Foucault Remember Baudrillard, 2005. This painting acts as a signpost towards the development of The Pink Monochrome Project because it combines the formal considerations of historical abstraction, such as hard edge geometry, a square format and variations of pink, with the conceptual considerations of cultural theory, including themes relating directly to the theoretical discourse of Postmodernism.
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Fig 14: Christopher Dean, Forget Foucault Remember Baudrillard, 2005, oil and felt on canvas, 120 x 120 cm. Collection of the artist.
Also at this time, I began to experiment with shaped canvases such as 1979, No More Puffs at the Star, 2005. The aim of these experiments was to develop a geometric shape that followed the external outline of the text. In retrospect these works serve to predict the most recent group of drawings titled Twelve Rules for a New Academy (gender & sexuality), 2010. These works are discussed in the conclusion of the thesis. These later series of drawings are linked to the earlier shaped canvases in that instead of developing a shape that traces the outline of the text, the more recent works include a rectangular or trapezoidal shape that traces the internal spaces or gaps within the structure of the text.
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Fig 15: Christopher Dean, 1979, No More Puffs at the Star, 2005, oil and felt on canvas, 45 x 45 cm. Collection of the artist.
The next stage in the evolution of my studio practice took place in 2006 and came as a direct result of the formulation of The Pink Monochrome Project. This investigation was driven by my own personal interest in the colour pink as well an art historical interest that sought to explore the literature informing cultural interpretations and associations of this colour. In 2006, I moved away from producing relief text monochromes and started to work on a series of painted text monochromes. It was at this time that I decided to produce a sustained series of paintings using variations of the colour pink. These paintings are produced using a typeface derived from my own childhood alphabet blocks.343 This typeface was chosen for several formal and conceptual reasons. From a formal perspective, it proved to be useful because of its ability to provide the paintings with an almost architectural or sculptural quality and it is this characteristic that connects these more recent works to the earlier relief paintings. Through the use of a wide variety of pinks, I have been able to overcome a network of formal limitations that initially led to the development of the earlier relief text paintings. The result of this process was the discovery of a technique that created
343 As a point of historical reference, the term ABC Art directly references Barbara Rose’s essay of the same name first published in Art in America, October-November, 1965, and this is the reference that confirmed my selection of the ABC block font. Barbara Rose, ‘ABC Art,’ in Gregory Battcock (ed.), Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1986, pp. 274-294.
110 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT the potential for the production of readable text using single-coloured two-dimensional surfaces or grounds. The formal efficiency of these works was developed in tandem with a conceptual goal that aims to represent subjective and personal concerns relating to the themes of gender, sexuality and identity. Through a combination ofthese formal and conceptual considerations, these paintings establish a template for the communication of ideas and concepts that is informed by my reading of cultural theory.
An early example from this series is a painting titled I arrived in Australia as a tourist in 1974 after meeting an Australian man in Buenos Aires ( Juan Davila), 2006. Through the inclusion of a sample of an artist’s writing, this painting combines elements derived from formal experiments in monochrome painting as well as the exploration of themes relating to the cultural expression of identity, subjectivity and locality.
Fig 16: Christopher Dean, I arrived in Australia as a tourist in 1974 after meeting an Australian man in Buenos Aires (Juan Davila). 2006, oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm. Collection of the artist.
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The continuous experimentation and refinement of this ongoing series of paintings has enabled me to explore a range of formal considerations such as colour, composition, grids, frames, typeface, design and scale. Through the inclusion of culturally specific narratives in this series close attention has been paid to connecting the form of the works with the content of the text. This process has led to a formal and semantic repositioning of the definition of monochrome painting enabling these works to be defined as experiments in formalism that have the potential to simultaneously represent issues relating to cultural theory while having the capacity to be interpreted by cultural theory. The choice of the colour pink is also important in the context of colour theory because it confirms the subject matter of the text used in the paintings by making reference to the issues of gender and sexuality.
Although in the past I have produced paintings using a wide range of colours, the use of the colour pink has been central to my practice for many years. Through the exclusive use of pink I have discovered that this increased level of specialisation has led to a situation that has been highly productive to the clarification of my art practice. One of the results of this thesis is the observation that no previous practitioner in the history of monochrome painting has developed an art practice that exclusively focuses on the colour pink. The broader consequences of the research project are that it has enabled me to concentrate on the development of my studio research, a situation that holds the potential to provide my art practice with additional clarity and focus for many years to come. For many artists involved in producing monochrome paintings, the colour pink has historically been avoided for cultural, ideological or subjective reasons. In order to question the aesthetic, formal and cultural positions that limit the use of pink in relation to the history of monochrome painting, one of the outcomes of this thesis is to identify the reasons for these limitations and to develop interpretations as to how these limitations may be measured.
From the perspective of my studio practice, the use of colour, compositional devices (such as grids and frames), as well as text, are factors that have informed this project. The decision to produce paintings that can be identified as monochromes using a wide selection of pinks was motivated by an interest in expanding the parameters of monochrome painting. After purchasing a selection of pre-mixed pinks, including rose and magenta, manufactured by several paint companies, I then went on to produce approximately six shades of pink from these parent colours. These six shades of pink are then mixed with other related pinks and whites to produce an infinite number of pinks. This approach has provided the paintings with a multiplicity of shades and tones of pink that enable these works to be formally and conceptually classified as monochromes. In addition, this sense of chromatic pluralism has enabled my experiments in monochrome painting to develop a palette that explores the full spectrum of the colour pink.
The use of grids provides the paintings with a structural formality that aligns the pink monochromes to many other artworks and styles from the history of abstraction, Minimalism and Conceptual Art. The use of a grid provides the monochromes with a format that contravenes
112 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT the poetic and overtly subjective narratives contained in the text. This is compounded by the way that the structural format of the paintings addresses the issue of legibility. By challenging the viewer’s immediate relationship with their own ability to interpret the text contained in the work, a parallel situation emerges connecting the style of the monochromes to the critical scope of the investigative potential of cultural theory.
In earlier studies for the development of the current series of paintings, I removed the blank spaces from between the various words included in the text while in other instances I provided spaces between all of the words used within a single work. After conducting various experiments, I came to the conclusion that if blank spaces were included between particular words, but not others, I could mimic the semantic qualities of spoken language through visual means. This formal approach enabled me to resolve a series of semantic and linguistic concerns. Through this process I was able to produce text monochromes that the viewer could easily read but that simultaneously remained partly abstracted. Through a break down in the syntax of the language used in these monochromes, the paintings have the potential to behave as active signifiers in the animation of cultural concerns. An example of a painting from this series is titled Middle Age Hard Edge Abstractionist From St. Marys Seeking Same, 2007.
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Fig 17: Christopher Dean, Middle Age Hard Edge Abstractionist From St. Marys Seeking Same, 2007, oil on canvas, 45 x 45 cm. Artbank collection.
Rosalind Krauss spoke out against Modernism’s application of the use of grids in negative terms, saying “…grids as a structure are emblematic of Modernist ambitions and it is remarkable how many artists explored this infertile ground enthusiastically.”344 While I identify as one of the artists that Krauss referred to, I have embraced this rigid structural format for culturally unstable purposes. The grids used to structure the paintings make explicit references to the applied arts and specifically to the craft of quilting. During my Masters of Fine Arts research I made a detailed study of the culture of quilting. At the time I observed that, as a craft, quilting remains completely under theorised and this may be compared to the lack of theorisation of the colour pink. The semiotics of grids contained in quilting patterns forms a direct link between the cultural concepts
344 Rosalind E. Krauss, ‘Grids’ in Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1985, p. 12.
114 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT of purity and contamination. From the critical perspectives of cultural theory, quilt patterns can also be productively compared to monochrome painting in that both forms of artistry combine a reliance on a preordained format or concept with a cultural application that is determined through their interpretation or practical use. From this position, quilts and monochrome paintings are connected through their application of a standardised formal method and through their ability to be interpreted from a cultural perspective. Conversely, quilting can be seen to occupy a position that is totally at odds with a conventional art historical interpretation of monochrome painting in that quilting explicitly relates to social and cultural concerns such as poverty, women’s history, domesticity and regionalism. In a parallel situation to the cultural interpretation of quilting, another outcome of this thesis is to identify the role that cultural specificities have played in the development of historical and contemporary monochrome painting.
During my previous research, I studied the works produced by the quilt makers of the Appalachian region of the United States. From the perspective of the international art world, this region is considered to be especially provincial, yet a study of Appalachian quilts, in conjunction with a detailed study of monochrome painting, has enabled me to identify a clear position in relation to these apparently unrelated discourses. From a culturally informed investigative perspective, what connects the practices of quilting to monochrome painting are the influences of purity and contamination, art and craft, masculinity and femininity, universalities and cultural specificities – issues that are interpreted through cultural theory. 345
After producing many rectangular monochromes and experimenting with shaped canvases, I decided to address Kazimir Malevich and Ad Reinhardt’s justification for their use of the square. Based on interpretations of their writings, as discussed in chapter four, both artists worked within the confines of the square in an attempt to explore a sense of neutrality that serves to bypass the conventions of landscape and portrait painting. The main problem with a square format is that text does not fit easily into this shape but the development of a formal technique structured around the use of grids and irregular spaces has enabled me to achieve a series of outcomes where the use of text can be accommodated within the format of a square template.
The frames surrounding the text grid are an important formal inclusion because they provide the paintings with additional solidity making them appear like objects. They also serve to appropriate Malevich’s works and, through them, the tradition of icon painting. By wrapping the painted frame around the sides of the paintings the idea that these monochromes are three-dimensional objects rather than two-dimensional paintings is reinforced. The differential width of the frames used in the paintings also enables the structural support of the works to adopt a square format.
345 Two publications that discuss these issues in detail are: Merikay Waldvogel, Soft Covers for Hard Times: Quiltmaking & The Great Depression, Nashville Tennessee: Rutledge Hill Press, 1990 and Robert Hughes, Amish: The Art of the Quilt, London: Phaidon Press, 1994.
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Scale is also a very important factor within these paintings. In order to produce the paintings cost effectively, I started out producing smaller size pink monochromes using five-centimetre text. Smaller works such as these are less expensive to produce and much easier to store and transport than larger works, however, my more recent works have been produced using ten-centimetre text which means that the overall size of each painting averages out at just over one metre in size.
The letters that are transcribed onto the canvas surface of the paintings are produced using stencils. The five-centimetre letters and numbers are produced using cardboard that is recycled from breakfast cereal boxes while the ten-centimetre text was made using boxboard. Chinagraph pencils are then used to transfer the text on to the surface of each canvas that is, in most cases, under painted using a diluted oil-based pink wash. The white waxy finish of the pencil lines provide the paintings with a finish that, at this early stage in the production process, resembles technical drawings such as pre-digital architectural plans, blueprints, road markings and dress-making patterns. In more recent works, I have left the traces of the white pencil lines exposed in certain parts of the painting as well as the thin wash of pink underpainting to reveal the processes at work and designating the layered surfaces and construction of each painting. When applied over a pink surface, the thin translucent lines of the pencil becomes transformed into a shade of soft pink serving to conform to the chromatic integrity of the paintings. The reason for the development of these processes is to provide a physical existence to the ideas that become a physical part of the paintings. As a studio practitioner, one of the greatest challenges of this research project has been the development of a physical form that satisfactorily responds to the narratives and ideas contained in the paintings. The transcription of cultural references onto the physical surface of the paintings, and onto their interpretation, serves to provide a critical framework from which to reinterpret the history of monochrome painting through the affirmation of gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity.
Since the early 1990s, the cultural and geographical co-ordinates of subjectivity and locality have played an important role in the construction of the themes and narratives informing the development of my studio practice. As a field of inquiry, cultural theory serves to examine distinct or marginal cultures and subjectivities as well as the geographical localities in which these cultures are placed.
Cultural theorists have developed practical responses to the identification and interpretation of philosophical concerns in the context of specific cultures and geographical locations. Although it may not be immediately obvious, formalism has the potential to lend itself to the interpretation and representation of gender, sexuality, identity and subjectivity through its emphasis on a close reading of aesthetics. Historically, monochrome painting is often referred to as the one of the purest and most conceptually obtuse manifestations of abstraction because it refutes its opposite
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(or perhaps its double),346 namely cultural and geographical specificities.347 Modernism’s historical refutation of the significance of cultural and geographical specificities has led to a situation that serves to foreground its dependence on these contingencies. As a global phenomenon, monochrome painting has been reinvented in many geographically specific cultures throughout the world, and during many different times in history, and it is the identification of these epistemologies that has led to the development of the methodology informing this thesis.
In contrast to these issues, much of the literature surrounding the history and theory of monochrome painting denies the relativity and contingency of monochrome painting in relation to issues of locality, geography and cultural specificity. However, through a critical reading of the literature associated with the historical evolution of formalism (as discussed in chapter three), and through my studio research, I have identified the ability for cultural theory to reinterpret monochrome painting.
As introduced earlier in this chapter, and with regard to the formal considerations of the studio component of the research project, the materials and text used in the paintings have also been selected for culturally specific purposes. For example, the automotive gaskets contained in the 1993 pink monochromes were included as a physical part of the paintings for culturally specific purposes. This ingestion of car parts and monochromes as an art historical format serves to identify personal interests as well as broader cultural, economic and technological conditions. The parts were produced by a local subsidiary of a US parent company and from the perspective of cultural theory, can be compared to the arrival and absorption of Clement Greenberg’s formalism by Australian artists at the same time. The cultural condition that motivated a sense of dependency within Australia’s art history has been diagnosed through the debates about provincialism and centre/periphery in the 1970s and 1980s. Terry Smith’s essay, The Provincialism Problem, is an early piece of writing that applies an investigative method to the examination of contemporary art practices from a cultural perspective. 348 This critique has been used to develop the methodology of this thesis and to position the studio component of The Pink Monochrome Project within a geographical context. Substantiating this position as an approach to critical thinking, cultural theory aims to interpret cultural and geographical concerns in relation to one another. From this relational position, all of the monochromes discussed in this thesis have the potential to be critically interpreted through cultural theory. This can be achieved by specifically situating the components of the paintings themselves, namely, the gaskets in the context of geographically specific debates including those relating to regionalism, provincialism and globalisation.
346 Frances Colpitt, ‘Systems of Opinion’ in Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 156. 347 Imants Tillers, ‘Locality Fails’ in Rex Butler (ed.), What is Appropriation?, Sydney: Power Publications, 1996, p. 139. 348 Terry Smith, ‘The Provincialism Problem’ in Butler (ed.), What is Appropriation?, p. 131.
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One of the challenges of the research project is to identify and define what might be called the ‘Postmodern monochrome’. The particular painting, discussed earlier in this chapter, that made an initial contribution to The Pink Monochrome Project is the work Forget Foucault Remember Baudrillard. As mentioned previously, this painting was completed using a geometric design and a multiplicity of pink oil paints on felt and canvas. The title of the work makes a direct reference to the title of a book that was written by Jean Baudrillard in 1984.349 Historically, 1984 was the year that Baudrillard made his first visit to Australia to speak at the Futur*fall conference. It was also the year that I started studying Postmodern theory as a second year Fine Arts student at the University of Sydney. The confluence of these broader historical events demonstrates the way that this particular painting combines the practice and technique of monochrome painting by directly referencing Postmodern theory.
Painted twenty-one years after the Futur*fall conference, Forget Foucault Remember Baudrillard is as an experiment that aims to combine the formal and conceptual themes within Modernism and Postmodernism. Through this work I wanted to make explicit what was implicit about the gasket monochromes produced in 1993. For several years prior to the production of this work, I had been thinking about the connection between Jean Baudrillard writings and the neo-geometric paintings of Peter Halley. The starting point for this work was Baudrillard’s diagnosis and prediction of the increased significance of global communications technology as discussed in publications such as The Ecstasy of Communication. 350 Since the 1980s, I have also been interested by Peter Halley’s paintings and their ability to combine the formal compositions of abstract art using motifs derived from battery cells and electronic circuits to represent what was, at that time, the newly emergent world of computer technologies. Halley’s neo-geometric abstract paintings uniquely combine a Postmodern attitude with a Modernist style. In terms of the interpretation of Halley’s position, Baudrillard’s writings about Halley’s paintings went part of the way towards defining of what Frances Colpitt later identified as “Postmodern representational abstraction”.351 The influence of Halley’s experiments on my own studio practice has enabled me to combine the influences of Modernism and Postmodernism within the specific area of monochrome painting.
The text contained in the painting was derived from a Juan Davila quote from the exhibition catalogue Hysterical Tears.352 Although this is the final rectangular painting that I produced, it is the first of the painted text works. In order to cover the surface of the painting evenly in an ‘all over’ fashion, the text was spaced in a differential format. The typeface included in this work is derived from my own childhood alphabet building blocks and, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, it was selected because it provides the work with the illusion of tightly constructed formal
349 Jean Baudrillard, Forget Foucault Remember Baudrillard, New York: Semiotext(e), Columbia University, 1984. 350 Jean Baudrillard, ‘The Ecstacy of Communication’ in Hal Foster (ed.),Postmodern Culture, London: Pluto Press, 1989. 351 Colpitt, ‘Systems of Opinion’ in Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century, p. 153. 352 Paul Taylor and Nelly Richard (eds.), Juan Davila, Hysterical Tears, London: GMP Publications, 1984.
118 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT structure. The title and content of this painting is a quote from Davila’s personal biography and was selected because it makes reference to an overtly subjective experience.
The final painting to be discussed in this chapter with regard to its textual content is Middle Age Hard Edge Abstractionist From St Marys Seeking Same, 2007. This work was created according to a series of clearly established systems and rules and contains the format and composition from which many of the subsequent paintings were also produced. This painting also established the ground rules for the clarification of a conceptual schema leading to the production of an extended series of works that directly reference specific cultures and geographical locations within Western Sydney.
The title of this work takes the form of a mock advertisement from the personal columns of a newspaper or magazine. The obvious humour contained within the text begs the question, “How many lonely hard edge abstractionists can there be living in the suburb of St Marys?” This overtly humourous monochrome draws into its critical orbit references to formalism as well as to the provincialism debates. In order to affirm the applied character of my research, this piece of text was included on a placard that I carried up Oxford Street as a participant in the Blacktown Art Centre’s 2008 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras float.
Over the past fourteen years I have participated in ten major exhibitions at galleries including the Penrith Regional Gallery, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Blacktown Arts Centre and the Liverpool Museum. Participating in many of the exhibitions held at these galleries provided me with the content for this series of paintings. The thematic content of the text contained in this series of monochromes makes reference to my personal experiences within the physical boundaries of a particular geographical locale. From 1995 until recently, the rapid growth and proliferation of exhibition venues in Western Sydney led to a shift in the location of my art practice from inner Sydney venues to those in Western Sydney. This geographical shift was a result of a series of cultural developments that saw the once peripheral zone of Western Sydney being transformed into a relatively cosmopolitan centre.
The most recent works to be produced at the conclusion of this project are a series of drawings titled Twelve Rules for a New Academy (gender & sexuality), 2010. Although these works are made using lead pencil and acrylic paint, my intent is to apply the format of these works to the production of large paintings measuring 5’ x 5’, the ideal size for a monochrome as discussed by Ad Reinhardt.353
353 Barbara Rose (ed.), Art as Art: The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt, New York: Viking Press, 1975, pp. 67-83.
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Fig 18: Christopher Dean, I grew up in a place where they think poofters are blokes who like women (Ian Milliss) from the series ‘Twelve Rules for a New Academy (gender & sexuality)’, 2010, pencil and acrylic on paper, 60 x 85 cm. Private collection.
Although the title of this series directly references Reinhardt’s statement that maps out the rights and wrongs of art, these works serve to amplify the overtly subjective position from which he was speaking. Rather than presenting viewers with a list of objective commandments, all of the quotations contained in these works refer literally to an issue relating to the themes of gender and sexuality. Additionally, each of the quotes begins with the word ‘I’ thus claiming an overtly intimate and subjective position. On a theoretical level, The Pink Monochrome Project proposes a second life for monochrome painting, one that is not, as Fried concedes, “artistically inert, or to use the language of ‘Art and Objecthood,’ merely depressingly literal.”354 On a practical level, the outcome of The Pink Monochrome Project is that it serves to lay the foundations for an ongoing and more culturally expansive treatment of what has been referred to throughout the thesis as culturally inclusive monochrome painting.
This chapter serves to identify what is defined as the ‘pure and applied’ elements contained in the studio component of the thesis. It concludes with the notion that monochrome painting has the potential to be simultaneously ‘abstract’ and ‘representational’ and demonstrates the way that
354 Michael Fried, ‘Joseph Marioni, The Painter,’ www.tiac.net/-marioni/reviews.html (date accessed: May 23, 2008)
120 THE PINK MONOCHROME PROJECT my own studio research establishes specific connections to discrete cultures, subjectivities and geographical locations.
121 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Erich Buchholz: The Restless Avant-Gardist, essays by Anne Kirker and Jacqueline Strecker, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2000. Published by the Queensland Art Gallery.
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129 APPENDIX
130