Monochromatic

Monochromatic

In 1915 the Ukrainian-born artist Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) painted a single black square against a white background. The painting is considered to be a revolutionary moment in art history, the culmination of a widespread movement towards pure abstraction. But Malevich was not the first artist to recognise the power of monochrome. Artists have been purposefully limiting themselves to a single colour for centuries, from grisaille paintings – images painted entirely in shades of grey – to the minimalist compositions of the twentieth century and beyond. Malevich’s breakthrough, however, articulated an innovative approach to monochrome. Unlike artists of the past who often chose a single colour for decorative reasons, for example to imitate stone or engravings, by restricting his palette and rejecting figuration, Malevich sought to create a ‘supreme’ art: the art of ‘pure feeling’.

Over the past century, many artists have followed this creative thread and produced non-representational art in a single colour. Most famously, perhaps, the French artist Yves Klein (1928-1962) who created a series of paintings entirely in blue. Like Malevich, Klein aimed to make art that transcended the physical world and expressed profound truths about human emotions, spirituality and existence. He produced his earliest monochrome paintings in the 1940s and 50s, originally in a variety of colours including orange, red and pink, but began to focus on blue in around 1957. In 1960 he developed International Klein Blue (IKB), his own shade of an ultramarine-based colour that he used to paint startlingly vivid compositions, often simple geometric blocks, that seem both to radiate light and to pull the viewer in. For Klein, while monochrome and abstraction provided the framework, the choice of colour was key to what he was trying to achieve. ‘Blue is the invisible becoming visible’, he famously said. ‘Blue has no dimensions. It is beyond the dimensions of which other colours partake.’

The monochrome thread was followed in the 1960s and 70s by minimalist artists including Agnes Martin, Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt, who imposed severe restrictions on their art by limiting themselves to simple lines or marks, and often working in a single colour. As conceptual art came to the fore, many minimalists believed that the idea behind a work of art was more important than the finished object and they purposefully set themselves rules that determined the outcome of their work. Their process-driven compositions are less emotionally evocative, perhaps, than Klein’s or the abstract expressionist paintings of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, but the pared-back aesthetic of their art is equally as powerful. Judd’s simple woodcuts in black, red or blue, for example, or Martin’s painted grey grids, hold a poetic simplicity that takes us out of the everyday world. The minimalists rejected the idea that art should reflect or represent something else, they believed that art should have its own meaning, a meaning that could not be expressed in any other form.

Perhaps more than any other medium, printmaking is traditionally associated with monochrome. For many years it was only possible to print in black and white, and colour had to be added by hand, which was time-consuming, expensive and inconsistent. Unable to rely on colour to create an image, artists had to therefore develop creative and innovative ways to vary their marks, textures and tones through ever-evolving printmaking techniques and the materials that they chose to use. This creativity is evident in this exhibition, which includes a selection of prints made by artists based in Ireland, all of whom have chosen to pick up and continue the abstract-monochrome thread. Drawn from the four studios of Print Network Ireland (Graphic Studio Dublin, Black Church Print Studio, Cork Printmakers and Limerick Printmakers), the artists have used a variety of techniques including woodcut, etching, screenprint and digital printing to create compositions in black and white, red, orange, yellow, pink and various shades of blue, the colour with no dimensions.

Each artist has made a work of art that could only have been achieved through print. Working in screenprint, for example, Mary O’Connor has created harmonious configurations of interacting forms, the clarity of which rely on the screenprinting technique. In addition, she uses the white paper to suggest depth and accentuate the hard edges of the interacting shapes. In contrast, John Graham uses etching to produce imprecise but perfectly balanced images composed of parallel or hatched lines in black, relying on plate tone and the choice of paper to create texture. Graham also exploits the malleability of paper in his work, often folding a sheet to create a three-dimensional printed form. Kate MacDonagh, meanwhile, uses Mokuhanga, a Japanese woodblock technique using water-based inks, to make delicate compositions that resemble woodgrain or textiles embroidered with thin threads of light. Frequently printed in blues and soft yellows, but sometimes in deeper, more intense colours, MacDonagh’s woodcuts comprise simple repetitive marks, mottled fields of colour and geometric shapes defined by subtle changes in tone, which coalesce to evoke a range of emotions but perhaps, primarily, a sense of calm.  

All of the artists in this exhibition have captured something on paper that would not otherwise be visible. Their images range from the subtle to the stark, the tranquil to the loud, the intimate to the bold. As viewers, we are conditioned to find meaning in art, to see water in blue, daylight in yellow and to feel a sense of melancholy or loss when confronted with grey, but abstract art transcends such limits. Unrestrained by representation and unbridled by colour, the artists in this exhibition have been released not only from dimensions but from any aspect of the physical world. As viewers we are equally free, steered by the artist’s choices but invited to respond in our own unique way. Paradoxically, therefore, in limiting their options, artists liberate both themselves and the viewer, revealing endless possibilities of experience and meaning.

Catherine Daunt

Curator of Modern and Contemporary Graphic Art, British Museum