Declaring Space
Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth
- Elizabeth L. Delaney -
Yves Klein, Le Saut dans le Vide (Leap into the Void)
Declaring Space brings together four artists intent on exploring the visual, spiritual and physical space that exists not only within and outside a work of art but also between art and viewer. While today this concept may seem trite, the works in this exhibition mark a period of time after World War II—a time when artistic expression was less about reflecting the recognizable world and more about examining the psychological ramifications of the experiences that inform life, and therefore creativity. Postwar society was a society of recovery—a culture that had witnessed great atrocities. As the American population emerged victorious and found rebirth in the pursuit of socioeconomic progress, the avant-garde of the time explored a deeper concern—one of spiritual fulfillment independent of material gains. In doing so, they began a new dialogue between artist and viewer, and space materialized as its mouthpiece.
The works featured in Declaring Space contend with spatial relationships in a way that was, for the time, revolutionary. The pictorial area addressed is not relegated only to the surface of the artwork but extends into the viewer’s arena. Pure expression presents an abstracted visual vocabulary, relying on formal elements to convey the artists’ ideas and emotions, breaking barriers in an attempt to move toward universal appreciation and accessibility.
Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale/Attese (Spatial Concept/Waiting), 1962; oil on canvas; 39 1/2 x 32 inches; Collection Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Museum purchase
Whether from the brooding, intellectual perspectives of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman or from the physically emphatic displays of Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein’s work, a conscious interplay between surface and the surrounding area dominates this exhibition. Declaring Space asks the overarching question, how do we share the space with these artists, and how did they intend to share it with us?
Rothko arguably changed the face of the art world with his nonrepresentational yet deeply emotive and emotional color-field paintings. Seeking to eliminate visual and psychological barriers between the artist and viewer, he began by losing all reference to the recognizable world. The space becomes universal, accessible and empathetic. A typical representation of the artist’s work, White Band No. 27 reveals infinite depths of cloudy color hovering over the canvas. Layer upon delicate layer consumes the canvas and then somehow spills out to embrace the viewer. The absence of hard-edged boundaries facilitates this rush, and the vivid emotions wrapped up inside the paint urge it onward. The viewer, gazing into the deep, ethereal canvas, feels like a part of the painting—part of the artist’s intention. A new space emerges, transcending the immediate world and moving towards a more universal understanding of the human condition.
Barnett Newman’s minimal yet monumental paintings and sculptures have a presence that dominates the space. Like Rothko, Newman removed recognizable imagery and cultural inference from his works in hopes of attaining a deeper connection with the universe. His “zip” paintings—large canvases with blocks of color separated by a thinner stripe—exist on a spatial plane all their own. Hard lines and jagged borders do not reach out and invite the viewer in as much as they create an otherworldly realm in which the viewer may catch a glimpse through the narrow openings between the solid planes. Newman’s minimalist, stainless-steel sculpture Here III becomes a tangible representation of spatial relationships as it introduces a positive form into the negative space of the gallery, literally sharing floor with the viewer. Here, the zip has jumped off the canvas and broken into three-dimensional space, eliminating the barrier between canvas and viewer.
Mark Rothko, White Band No. 27, 1954; oil on canvas; 81 1/4 x 87 inches; Private Collection
Lucio Fontana’s works involve a gestural interaction with space—one that physically and visually alters the art object and the environment that contains it. By piercing or slicing through canvas, he introduces a third dimension to the otherwise flat works. This action records a physical exchange—an uninterrupted flow through the space. To Fontana, this process represented an abandonment of the canvas as art object and its transformation into a conduit for connecting with the greater universe—a physical act to access the spiritual realm. In Concetto spaziale/Attese (Spatial Concept/Waiting), seven vertical cuts progress across the surface. The artist has united the space behind, within, in front of and infinitely beyond the canvas. In this manner, the object falls away and the focus of the work shifts to what lies before and beyond it.
Like Fontana, Yves Klein examines a departure from the idea of the canvas as a material object existing entirely in the present and visible realm. His Fire Colored Painting exhibits a visual record of movement across the surface, although transparent, negative space is all that remains inside the outline of human forms. Here, the artist literally fuses the external, anthropomorphic world with inanimate surface space. By using the human body as applicator, Klein removes himself from the space, creating an unadulterated, undiluted path of communication between art and universe.
Rothko, Newman, Fontana and Klein exhibit a pronounced concern with escaping the material world and accessing a realm that supersedes it. By reducing or eliminating focus on the object and instead exploring how art interacts with the immediate space of the gallery and the broader universal space of humanity, these artists progress towards a deeper understanding of themselves and the world. For them, the world must be considered on a spiritual level and experienced in a space we cannot immediately access or realize. The creation of this art opened the door to that process as these artists identified a new way of addressing the multidimensional, conceptual experience of a universal space in a timeless dialogue.
Elizabeth L. Delaney