Peinture acrylique blanche sur tissu rayé blanc et gris

1996
Daniel Buren

White acrylic paint on canvas
209.0 x 0.0 x 196.0 cm (sur châssis)

Buren produced a series of works with the pattern as background, to which he applied a layer of white acrylic paint in pre-defined areas. Peinture aux formes variables, [sept.-oct.] 1966 and Peinture acrylique blanche sur tissu rayé blanc et gris, [nov.-dec.] 1996, two works from the collection, belong to this group. The artist methodically coats the bands of color situated at the edges of the canvas. Using great economy of means, this process of erasing and covering up plays both visually and formally between the background (the support) and the form (the paint). Presented in two ways—fastened to the floor or leaning against the wall—these two historic works, representative of this transitional period in Buren’s career, heralded his rupture with painting and a shift towards a focus on space and its context. Thereafter, each work would be created according to the particularities of the host space—in other words, in situ.

Hangs

A Vision for Painting

From 20 February 2019 to 26 August 2019

For five decades, Daniel Buren has been reinventing the forms of and issues surrounding the pictorial medium in a radical body of work that draws on a method he began defining in the 1960s.

The discovery of a specific striped curtain fabric in 1965 marked a major turning point in his practice. Attracted to the ordinariness of this industrial product, he saw in it the possibility to approach art in an impersonal way and reduce his pictorial intervention to its simplest expression in order to achieve what he refers to as “degree zero of painting.” Buren produced a series of works with the pattern as background, to which he applied a layer of white acrylic paint in pre-defined areas.