Javascript must be enabled to continue!
Frank Bowling’s White Paintings
View through CrossRef
Frank Bowling’s white paintings span a period of some forty years in his practice, resulting in an eponymously titled exhibition The White Paintings (2006). As a body of work, the paintings occupy the longest period within Bowling’s career yet are largely absent from his historiography and are the least referenced, either as single works or as a series. The paradox of Bowling’s white paintings is that they are not all merely white nor are they all monochromes. A consideration of them presents an opportunity to resituate Bowling from a singular focus of formalism and to convey his deep relation to the world around him via a mode of abstraction that is layered with meanings. This investigation follows by centering upon a single painting from Bowling’s white series, Icarus (2005), produced after the death of his eldest son. Icarus explores themes of time, death, and spiritual release that are constant throughout the series. Bowling undercuts attendant ideas of purity and singleness, both in his exploration of whiteness and within the “tradition” of monochrome painting, and exposes its fallacies. Bowling’s white paintings thus mediate the way both modernity and history may be otherwise deployed, speaking inevitably to how the myth of whiteness is imbricated within the construction of modernism.
Title: Frank Bowling’s White Paintings
Description:
Frank Bowling’s white paintings span a period of some forty years in his practice, resulting in an eponymously titled exhibition The White Paintings (2006).
As a body of work, the paintings occupy the longest period within Bowling’s career yet are largely absent from his historiography and are the least referenced, either as single works or as a series.
The paradox of Bowling’s white paintings is that they are not all merely white nor are they all monochromes.
A consideration of them presents an opportunity to resituate Bowling from a singular focus of formalism and to convey his deep relation to the world around him via a mode of abstraction that is layered with meanings.
This investigation follows by centering upon a single painting from Bowling’s white series, Icarus (2005), produced after the death of his eldest son.
Icarus explores themes of time, death, and spiritual release that are constant throughout the series.
Bowling undercuts attendant ideas of purity and singleness, both in his exploration of whiteness and within the “tradition” of monochrome painting, and exposes its fallacies.
Bowling’s white paintings thus mediate the way both modernity and history may be otherwise deployed, speaking inevitably to how the myth of whiteness is imbricated within the construction of modernism.
Related Results
Frank Bowling’s White Paintings
Frank Bowling’s White Paintings
Frank Bowling’s white paintings span a period of some forty years in his practice, resulting in an eponymously titled exhibition The White Paintings (2006). As a body of work, the ...
Trauma, Mind Style, and Unreliable Narration in Toni Morrison’s Home
Trauma, Mind Style, and Unreliable Narration in Toni Morrison’s Home
ABSTRACT
This article provides a twofold reading of Toni Morrison’s novel Home. In the first instance, the stylistic representation of post-traumatic stress disorder...
The Paper Knife – Patrick White and Katherine Mansfield
The Paper Knife – Patrick White and Katherine Mansfield
This article details the provenance of a paper knife which had belonged to Katherine Mansfield and was donated to the Alexander Turnbull Library by Patrick White. White was strongl...
Literature on the Preservation of Nonpaper Materials
Literature on the Preservation of Nonpaper Materials
This review essay describes selected recent writings on the preservation of nonpaper materials. Following an introduction to general works and periodicals, the author notes importa...
The Social Physics of Festuge: Odin Teatret at Home
The Social Physics of Festuge: Odin Teatret at Home
The Holstebro Festuge (festival week), which marked its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2014, is a huge undertaking organized by Odin Teatret every three years that involves the partic...
Women in Morocco: Gender Equality
Women in Morocco: Gender Equality
This newsflash focuses on gender equality in Morocco. The articles are a result of research conducted throughout the semester (Spring 2014), as well as a service-learning trip to R...
A Model House and a House's Model: Reexamining Frank Lloyd Wright's House on the Mesa Project
A Model House and a House's Model: Reexamining Frank Lloyd Wright's House on the Mesa Project
This article examines Frank Lloyd Wright's House on the Mesa project, which, despite its familiarity to most historians of twentieth-century architecture, has never been thoroughly...
Hollywood stars vs variety show hosts: The incompatible case of Frank Sinatra on 1950s television
Hollywood stars vs variety show hosts: The incompatible case of Frank Sinatra on 1950s television
This article considers the identity of the variety show host on 1950s American television, exploring how Frank Sinatra's poorly received assumption of the role reveals its strictly...
Recent Results
The Thing in a Jar: Mushrooms and Ontological Speculations in Post-Yugoslavia
The Thing in a Jar: Mushrooms and Ontological Speculations in Post-Yugoslavia
This essay thinks with things that ferment medical remedies in recycled jars and issue exuberant surpluses across kitchens in Bosnia and ex-Yugoslavia. While the jars are handled u...
X-radiograph(s) of "Sketch for Ceiling"
X-radiograph(s) of "Sketch for Ceiling"
X-Radiograph Description: X-Radiograph
Burroughs Number: 3097
X-Radiograph(s) of:
Artist: Guarana, Jacopo, Italian, 1720-1808
Artist: And Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, Itali...
Pre-Columbian Pottery Mushrooms from Mesoamerica
Pre-Columbian Pottery Mushrooms from Mesoamerica
AbstractUntil recently, pre-Columbian mushroom-shaped pottery objects were known only from El Salvador. New evidence indicates that they were also used in Chiapas, Tabasco, and Ver...