MOMENTS | Mash-up: Art x Theory x the Color Black, Pushing New Boundaries with the Blank Slate Color
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When Russian artist Kazimir Malevich unveiled Black Square (1915), he ushered in Suprematism, one of the most radical developments in abstract art. Influenced by avant-garde poets and an emerging movement in literary criticism, Suprematism used the monochrome in the “rediscovery of pure art which, in the course of time, had become obscured by the accumulation of ‘things.’” It’s been a century since the introduction of the color black as the “zero point,” a void for the old, thus welcoming the freedom to feel and create something new. As you’ve noticed, we’re working an all black everything theme here, so let’s take a look at some of the best all-black paintings that have emerged in the last century.
Robert Rauschenberg began his series of black paintings in 1951, and among these works is his Untitled [glossy black painting]. The piece was Rauschenberg’s exploration of the boundary between painting and collage and used collaged, dipped, and painted newspaper fragments to add a third dimension to his paintings.
In the same era, there’s abstract artist Ad Reinhardt. Reinhardt spent the better part of 1953 until his death in 1967 on his all black paintings, which he described as, “A free, unmanipulated, unmanipulatable, useless, unmarketable, irreducible, unphotographable, unreproducible, inexplicable icon.” The profound, self-reflection that Reinhardt’s black paintings produced was a reaction to how, when everything is in motion, art should be still.
Sergej Jensen’s black monochromes painting on hemp, Untitled (2008), is a more recent take on the all-black painting. The piece places its focus on the material as a means of achieving form. As the black paint dried, the hemp canvas warped and cracked stretcher bars, a representation of the tortured state of internal struggle.
It’s a new year, and a new blank slate. We want to leave those tensions of the past behind, so grab your Black Leather Overnight with Neomesh Sides $405 and get ready to embark on that new adventure.
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