Beginning with white
The construction of the white rectangular form has a very particular history in modern art which, of course, extends into contemporary practice. Without attempting to recreate a strict chronology of its appearance in art history, it is possible to trace its various mutations and functions that have affected my own practice. The Modernist white square begins with Malevich’s White on White, 1918. The work is entirely white but through a difference of brushstroke texture a white square emerges within the white square of the canvas. The pure geometry and absence of colour resist representation of any kind. The white is deceptively simple as it, in fact, highlights the difference rather than the similarity of the two squares. The smaller square is tilted towards the top left corner creating a dynamic tension and the diagonal pulls the focus towards the angle of the smaller square, drawing attention to the edges of the canvas. In his Suprematist ideals Malevich believed White on White was a manifestation of a ‘new, pure form art’. The idealism of Suprematism was a reflection of society, wherein Russia, Communism was being established and this sense of a fresh optimism can be seen in Malevich’s radical artwork. How the exploration of monochromatic painting has since continued may be related to this paradoxical dynamic. On one hand it embodies purity and objectivity. The material entity represents nothing but itself. This ‘painting as object’ opposes illusionism in painting. Alternatively it may be considered to be the representation of the infinite, thus taking figurative painting to its absolute limit. This curious binary informs my own work and can be seen most clearly in Untitled (landscape).
Wolfgang Laib, Milkstone, 1977
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Theaters, 1978
Paramount, Oakland, 1994 La Paloma, Encinitas, 1993
Orinda Theater, Orinda, 1992 Cinerama Dome, Hollywood, 1993
Nam June Paik Zen For Film, 1962-64
The radical white of Modernity also finds its incarnation in the cinema screen. Hiroshi Sugimoto
Theatres is a photo-series of auditoriums of American movie theatres and drive-in movies, during screenings. The exposure time for each image is the duration of the entire projection of the film. The compression of the film’s length is a pure white screen which illuminates the dark surroundings. The film is evacuated of content and becomes an absolute presence, a record of time and spatial perception. In the sense that the cinema screen because the locus of accumulated information and pure possibility, I have proportioned the white rectangle of Untitled (paysage) and Paris Fictions, into the five by four dimensions of a video or television screen. This was important, as it is a very particular form that is more universal than the cinema format, many directors use different height to width ratios, for example, 1:85, 16:9 and so forth but VHS and television is the same everywhere. This quietly ubiquitous shape stands in for the accumulated stories and information any viewer can reference when faced against a blank surface to create meaning.
Theatres is a photo-series of auditoriums of American movie theatres and drive-in movies, during screenings. The exposure time for each image is the duration of the entire projection of the film. The compression of the film’s length is a pure white screen which illuminates the dark surroundings. The film is evacuated of content and becomes an absolute presence, a record of time and spatial perception. In the sense that the cinema screen because the locus of accumulated information and pure possibility, I have proportioned the white rectangle of Untitled (paysage) and Paris Fictions, into the five by four dimensions of a video or television screen. This was important, as it is a very particular form that is more universal than the cinema format, many directors use different height to width ratios, for example, 1:85, 16:9 and so forth but VHS and television is the same everywhere. This quietly ubiquitous shape stands in for the accumulated stories and information any viewer can reference when faced against a blank surface to create meaning.
Two works which I had seen separately on two different occasions were brought together at the Pompidou Centre for the Movement in Images exhibition, they were Nam June Paik’s Zen for Film (Fluxfilm nø 1) 1964, a 16 mm unexposed silent film of 8 minutes duration projected on a loop and Wolfgang Laib’s Milkstone. Placed just under the whirring projection of Zen for Film, Milkstone was a manifestation of calm but a tranquillity that rested on a fine balance, here again the ‘white rectangle’ contained a paradox, this time of order and chaos. Paik’s work is, for me, the ultimate tabula rasa and the most radical ‘point zero’ of Modernity. Its material complexity – the cinematic apparatus, that which involves, time, movement, and sound presents to the viewer a most acute experience of ‘nothingness’, not even matter (molecules) but simple light. As Milkstone sat directly under Zen for Film, I was able to see the correlation of white in its various forms from solid to liquid to a kind of gaseous state of pure light. Incidentally it was amusing to get the sense of ‘nothing’ sullied by the inevitable materiality of existence; Zen for Film is in fact a projection of the shadows created by the dust accumulated on the reel of film and the smooth, milky surface of Laib’s work was covered by a layer of dust and fibres. Overall the white rectangle is a key motif in my thinking as it is simultaneously effacement, void and solid and like the fresh canvas, it is a good place to begin any story on art.
Section 2
