.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Quiet in presence, Peinture acrylique blanche sur tissu rayé blanc et orange by French Conceptual artist Daniel Buren presents alternating orange and raw canvas stripes, with the penultimate bands on either side subtly painted in white. Forming part of his recognisably trademarked artistic practice, Peinture acrylique blanche sur tissu rayé blanc et orange leans elegantly against the wall in almost nonchalant manner, appearing as both painting and sculpture. The alternating vertical strips of colour and white are collected and arranged in a manner first adopted by the artist in the mid-1960’s. Buren’s works, though united in form and pattern, are in fact each unique carefully orchestrated by the artist in with respect to the chosen context of the work.
The stripes of this painting, in their repetitive rhythm and lack of separation between artwork and frame blur notions of form and content and point to Buren’s interest in both the relationship of his works to the viewer and the exploration of creating works for purely decorative purposes. ‘It is not’ states the artist ‘a question of ornamenting (disfiguring or embellishing) the place (the architecture) in which the work is installed, but of indicating as precisely as possible the way the work belongs in the place and vice versa, as soon as the latter is shown’ (D. Buren, quoted in, ‘Notes on Work in Connection with the Place Where it is Installed, Taken between 1967-1975, Some of Which are Specially Summarized Here for the September/October Edition of Studio International’, in Studio International, Sept/Oct 1975, p. 124). The stripes of Peinture acrylique blanche sur tissu rayé blanc et orange are therefore not simply embellishments, but rather trajectories for the exploration of both the pictorial space and the site of its installation, transforming both.
The ‘zero degree’ painting concept, rooted in the tradition of Malevich’s Suprematism and Constructivism’s principles, is intrinsic in this work and is a crucial aspect of Buren’s practice. After 1966, Buren abandoned traditional painting and became inspired by everyday striped curtain material, a popular French fabric motif. The artist refers to his ubiquitous bands as a ‘visual tools’, and more specifically as a readymade, and has employed them in order to develop an aesthetic form that rejected the formal exploration of painting. Which is to say that Buren nurtures seeing that interrogates the very act of seeing: ‘the visuality of painting itself is [painting's] perpetual and constant effacement as something visible...It is finally its absence as paint, or rather its interrogation at the very moment where it appears, which can make one blind. The visuality of painting itself is the definitive disappearance of painting as something visual.’ (D. Buren, quoted in, C. Terranova, Performing the Frame: Daniel Buren, Degree Zero Painting and a Politics of Beauty reproduced at https://www.stretcher.org/projects/symposia/performingtheframe.html).
In this way, Buren began to explore the possibilities of the striped motif as a sign. He started to situate the stripes like posters on already existing billboards, populating the streets with so called affichages sauvage and applied them to many varied supports. The radicalism of his practice generated controversy in 1971 at the 6th International Exhibition of the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York. At the request of Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Joseph Kosuth, and Richard Long, who felt their respective installations were aesthetically interrupted by Buren’s striped banner, his work was excluded from the exhibition. Despite this, Buren’s celebrated participation in Harald Szeeman’s Documenta V the following year opened the door to his subsequently lauded exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Picasso Museum, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the hallowed escalators of Art Basel, among other venues. Buren’s stripes have permanently transformed a bridge in Bilbao and the Palais-Royal in Paris.
The economy of means exemplified by Daniel Buren’s Peinture acrylique blanche sur tissu rayé blanc et orange is the foundation upon which the artist has built a rich and complex body of work. In the words of Buren himself, ‘(R)epetition is the ineluctable means of legibility of the proposition itself’ (D. Buren, quoted in ‘Beware!’, Studio International, Journal of Modern Art, London, no. 920, vol. 179, March 1970, p. 103).
The stripes of this painting, in their repetitive rhythm and lack of separation between artwork and frame blur notions of form and content and point to Buren’s interest in both the relationship of his works to the viewer and the exploration of creating works for purely decorative purposes. ‘It is not’ states the artist ‘a question of ornamenting (disfiguring or embellishing) the place (the architecture) in which the work is installed, but of indicating as precisely as possible the way the work belongs in the place and vice versa, as soon as the latter is shown’ (D. Buren, quoted in, ‘Notes on Work in Connection with the Place Where it is Installed, Taken between 1967-1975, Some of Which are Specially Summarized Here for the September/October Edition of Studio International’, in Studio International, Sept/Oct 1975, p. 124). The stripes of Peinture acrylique blanche sur tissu rayé blanc et orange are therefore not simply embellishments, but rather trajectories for the exploration of both the pictorial space and the site of its installation, transforming both.
The ‘zero degree’ painting concept, rooted in the tradition of Malevich’s Suprematism and Constructivism’s principles, is intrinsic in this work and is a crucial aspect of Buren’s practice. After 1966, Buren abandoned traditional painting and became inspired by everyday striped curtain material, a popular French fabric motif. The artist refers to his ubiquitous bands as a ‘visual tools’, and more specifically as a readymade, and has employed them in order to develop an aesthetic form that rejected the formal exploration of painting. Which is to say that Buren nurtures seeing that interrogates the very act of seeing: ‘the visuality of painting itself is [painting's] perpetual and constant effacement as something visible...It is finally its absence as paint, or rather its interrogation at the very moment where it appears, which can make one blind. The visuality of painting itself is the definitive disappearance of painting as something visual.’ (D. Buren, quoted in, C. Terranova, Performing the Frame: Daniel Buren, Degree Zero Painting and a Politics of Beauty reproduced at https://www.stretcher.org/projects/symposia/performingtheframe.html).
In this way, Buren began to explore the possibilities of the striped motif as a sign. He started to situate the stripes like posters on already existing billboards, populating the streets with so called affichages sauvage and applied them to many varied supports. The radicalism of his practice generated controversy in 1971 at the 6th International Exhibition of the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York. At the request of Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Joseph Kosuth, and Richard Long, who felt their respective installations were aesthetically interrupted by Buren’s striped banner, his work was excluded from the exhibition. Despite this, Buren’s celebrated participation in Harald Szeeman’s Documenta V the following year opened the door to his subsequently lauded exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Picasso Museum, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the hallowed escalators of Art Basel, among other venues. Buren’s stripes have permanently transformed a bridge in Bilbao and the Palais-Royal in Paris.
The economy of means exemplified by Daniel Buren’s Peinture acrylique blanche sur tissu rayé blanc et orange is the foundation upon which the artist has built a rich and complex body of work. In the words of Buren himself, ‘(R)epetition is the ineluctable means of legibility of the proposition itself’ (D. Buren, quoted in ‘Beware!’, Studio International, Journal of Modern Art, London, no. 920, vol. 179, March 1970, p. 103).