The Black Square 1 casts its long rectangular shadow over much of the 20th century and into the 21st century. Malevich—as a writer as much as an artist —was an important early guidepost for the German painter, sculptor and installation artist Imi Knoebel 2 : Knoebel’s use of colour was initially restricted to white and black, and to the colours that were inherent to materials he would use. When colour, in the form of specific (unmixed) samples from the colour spectrum, entered Knoebel’s work in the mid-1970s, it did so because it was a quality (as in Paul Klee’s sense of not ascribing certain qualities to colour, but denoting colour as a quality in itself 3 ). “Colour exists in itself, has its own beauty 4 . We were made to realize this by the Japanese crépons 5 we bought for a few centimes on the rue de Seine. Then I understood that one could work with expressive colours which are not necessarily descriptive colours. Of course, the originals were no doubt disappointing. But isn’t eloquence even more powerful, more direct, when the means are vulgar? Van Gogh was also crazy about Japanese crépons . Once my eye was unclogged, cleansed by the Japanese crépons , I was capable of really absorbing the colours because of their emotive power.” Imi Knoebel’s 24 Farben—für Blinky [24 Colours—for Blinky] from 1977 is characterized by a clear separation of colour into various shapes 6 : Each shape is assigned its own colour: All of the twenty-four works of the series have irregular forms, they are paintings, clearly, but there is no rectangular canvas signifying this, and this independence of the one shape conventionally associated with the idea of a painting puts the focus, squarely, on colour. Knoebel created the work in homage to a close friend he had recently lost, the artist Blinky Palermo 7 , whom he considered a master of colour. While the twenty-four colours are supposed to represent, in a general sense, the full spectrum of colour, they are also, in Knoebel’s words, “very personal colours”: an expression of gratitude for a friendship. In their work BFF (2018), Circles & Wigs (the Canadian artist duo of Jessica Groome and Ashleigh Bartlett) directly address the idea of friendship: BFF is an acronym of Best Friends Forever 8 , an exclamatory phrase used by adolescents, most commonly girls, to describe an important, seemingly permanent (but likely fleeting) relationship to a peer. In a manner that is both tongue-in-cheek and with genuine respect for each other’s work, Groome and Bartlett’s long distance collaboration (between Berlin and Boston, currently) expands the term BFF to include not only their own actual friendship, but, significantly, the role of colour in their work. Similarly to how Knoebel’s twenty-four colours were a present—a tribute—to his friend, Groome and Bartlett are gifting each other colours (by assigning colour palettes) that they then use to create their respective works. Groome creates circles , monochromatic circular paintings, while Bartlett makes wigs from cut strips of polychromatically painted paper. There are two distinct stages to their working process, first apart from each other and outside of public access in their studios on different continents, then in situ at the gallery—collaboratively and performatively—, where we, the beholders, can take part in how a new set of “very personal colours” emerges. “What counts most with colours are relationships. Thanks to them and them alone a [work of art] can be intensely coloured without there being any need for actual colour.” 9 “Any need for actual colour”? There is matter, and there is energy, and both are devoid of colour. Different kinds of matter have different kinds of molecular structures, which means they vary in how they absorb light. The light that is not absorbed by any given type of matter—the rest of the light, that is—is being remitted, or transmitted, to the eye of the beholder. Those rays of light carry in them the information that we decode as colour. But it is us, the beholders, that are actively taking part in this process of interpretation: without us, and without our contribution, there is no colour. We actively identify colours, name them, contrast and complement them: As we distinguish one colour from another, we can see—or, again, more precisely: interpret—similarities and differences, shades of colours, and based on that we can make decisions, and in doing so, we create relationships. Colour is in us. We are colour. Why colour? Because we are. 1 Kazimir Malevich: The Black Square, oil on linen, 80 by 80 centimetres, 1915. With his concept of Suprematism, first introduced in 1915, Malevich proclaimed a directive for abstract art based on geometric forms as opposed to art that is devoted to the literal depiction of the material world for utilitarian purposes. He elaborated on Suprematism in his book The Non-Objective World that was published in 1927—not coincidentally— by the Bauhaus. 2 Imi Knoebel (German, 1940—) is a major proponent of Minimal Art. His abstract oeuvre in painting, sculpture and installation is strongly influenced by modernist principles, by Malevich and the Bauhaus. Knoebel’s work 24 Farben—für Blinky [24 Colours— for Blinky] (1977) that Circles & Wigs are referencing in their work BFF (2018), is in the collection of the Dia Art Foundation, New York. 3 Paul Klee, in a talk delivered in 1924 4 Henri Matisse in a conversation with André Marchand, 1947. Here, anecdotally, yet concisely, Matisse foreshadows Knoebel’s “discovery” of colour: Matisse’s delight in a consumer product—Japanese crépons—a culturally distant artifact to a eurocentric perspective (although manufactured with exactly that foreign audience in mind), helped him achieve a closeness to colour, to see colour for what it was, as opposed to what it was signifying. 5 Japanese crêpe paper (chirimen-gami ) is a finely textured, crinkled paper. In the late 1800s, when Europe “discovered” Japanese visual culture, it was typically sold in small formats, often not bigger than a letter size sheet, with colourful prints of Japanese landscapes or rural scenes incorporating figurative elements. 6 See also: “Shaped Canvas”, a term most commonly associated with 1960s New York based artists like Richard Tuttle or Frank Stella who explored non-rectangular uses of the canvas, and the 1964 Guggenheim exhibition “The Shaped Canvas”, curated by Lawrence Alloway. Notable precursors of art on irregularly shaped surfaces are the circular Tondo (mostly used for portraits) in ancient Greece, or Renaissance era Madonna and Child paintings with frames devised to echo and enhance its pictorial subjects (for example, in a rounded shape around a halo). 7 Blinky Palermo (1943-1977), influental German painter, like Knoebel he studied under Joseph Beuys 8 Most commonly used in text messaging, at the end of a conversation, the term’s first recorded use is from 1996, and in 2010 it was added to the New Oxford American Dictionary. 9 Henri Matisse, in a conversation with Gaston Diehl, 1945 Notes on Imi Knoebel, Henri Matisse and Colour as a Quality For Circles & Wigs Why Colour? —Manfred Naescher, March 2018
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The Black Square 1 casts its long rectangular shadow over much of the 20th century and into the 21st century. Malevich—as a writer as much as an artist —was an important early guidepost for the German painter, sculptor and installation artist Imi Knoebel2: Knoebel’s use of colour was initially restricted to white and black, and to the colours that were inherent to materials he would use. When colour, in the form of specific (unmixed) samples from the colour spectrum, entered Knoebel’s work in the mid-1970s, it did so because it was a quality (as in Paul Klee’s sense of not ascribing certain qualities to colour, but denoting colour as a quality in itself 3). “Colour exists in itself, has its own beauty4. We were made to realize this by the Japanese crépons 5 we bought for a few centimes on the rue de Seine. Then I understood that one could work with expressive colours which are not necessarily descriptive colours. Of course, the originals were no doubt disappointing. But isn’t eloquence even more powerful, more direct, when the means are vulgar? Van Gogh was also crazy about Japanese crépons. Once my eye was unclogged, cleansed by the Japanese crépons, I was capable of really absorbing the colours because of their emotive power.” Imi Knoebel’s 24 Farben—für Blinky [24 Colours—for Blinky] from 1977 is characterized by a clear separation of colour into various shapes 6: Each shape is assigned its own colour: All of the twenty-four works of the series have irregular forms, they are paintings, clearly, but there is no rectangular canvas signifying this, and this independence of the one shape conventionally associated with the idea of a painting puts the focus, squarely, on colour. Knoebel created the work in homage to a close friend he had recently lost, the artist Blinky Palermo7, whom he considered a master of colour. While the twenty-four colours are supposed to represent, in a general sense, the full spectrum of colour, they are also, in Knoebel’s words, “very personal colours”: an expression of gratitude for a friendship. In their work BFF (2018), Circles & Wigs (the Canadian artist duo of Jessica Groome and Ashleigh Bartlett) directly address the idea of friendship: BFF is an acronym of Best Friends Forever 8, an exclamatory phrase used by adolescents, most commonly girls, to describe an important, seemingly permanent (but likely fleeting) relationship to a peer. In a manner that is both tongue-in-cheek and with genuine respect for each other’s work, Groome and Bartlett ’s long distance collaboration (between Berlin and Boston, currently) expands the term BFF to include not only their own actual friendship, but, significantly, the role of colour in their work. Similarly to how Knoebel’s twenty-four colours were a present—a tribute—to his friend, Groome and Bartlett are gifting each other colours (by assigning colour palettes) that they then use to create their respective works. Groome creates circles, monochromatic circular paintings, while Bartlett makes wigs from cut strips of polychromatically painted paper. There are two distinct stages to their working process, first apart from each other and outside of public access in their studios on different continents, then in situ at the gallery—collaboratively and performatively—, where we, the beholders, can take part in how a new set of “very personal colours” emerges. “What counts most with colours are relationships. Thanks to them and them alone a [work of art] can be intensely coloured without there being any need for actual colour.” 9
“Any need for actual colour”? There is matter, and there is energy, and both are devoid of colour. Different kinds of matter have different kinds of molecular structures, which means they vary in how they absorb light. The light that is not absorbed by any given type of matter—the rest of the light, that is—is being remitted, or transmitted, to the eye of the beholder. Those rays of light carry in them the information that we decode as colour. But it is us, the beholders, that are actively taking part in this process of interpretation: without us, and without our contribution, there is no colour. We actively identify colours, name them, contrast and complement them: As we distinguish one colour from another, we can see—or, again, more precisely: interpret—similarities and differences, shades of colours, and based on that we can make decisions, and in doing so, we create relationships. Colour is in us. We are colour. Why colour? Because we are.
1 Kazimir Malevich: The Black Square, oil on
linen, 80 by 80 centimetres, 1915. With his
concept of Suprematism, first introduced in
1915, Malevich proclaimed a directive for
abstract art based on geometric forms as
opposed to art that is devoted to the literal
depiction of the material world for utilitarian
purposes. He elaborated on Suprematism in
his book The Non-Objective World that was
published in 1927—not coincidentally— by
the Bauhaus.
2 Imi Knoebel (German, 1940—) is a major
proponent of Minimal Art. His abstract oeuvre
in painting, sculpture and installation is
strongly influenced by modernist principles,
by Malevich and the Bauhaus. Knoebel’s
work 24 Farben—für Blinky [24 Colours—
for Blinky] (1977) that Circles & Wigs are
referencing in their work BFF (2018), is in the
collection of the Dia Art Foundation, New York.
3 Paul Klee, in a talk delivered in 1924
4 Henri Matisse in a conversation with
André Marchand, 1947. Here, anecdotally,
yet concisely, Matisse foreshadows Knoebel’s
“discovery” of colour: Matisse’s delight in a
consumer product—Japanese crépons—a
culturally distant artifact to a eurocentric
perspective (although manufactured with
exactly that foreign audience in mind), helped
him achieve a closeness to colour, to see
colour for what it was, as opposed to what it
was signifying.
5 Japanese crêpe paper (chirimen-gami ) is
a finely textured, crinkled paper. In the late
1800s, when Europe “discovered” Japanese
visual culture, it was typically sold in small
formats, often not bigger than a letter size
sheet, with colourful prints of Japanese
landscapes or rural scenes incorporating
figurative elements.
6 See also: “Shaped Canvas”, a term most
commonly associated with 1960s New York
based artists like Richard Tuttle or Frank
Stella who explored non-rectangular uses
of the canvas, and the 1964 Guggenheim
exhibition “The Shaped Canvas”, curated
by Lawrence Alloway. Notable precursors of
art on irregularly shaped surfaces are the
circular Tondo (mostly used for portraits) in
ancient Greece, or Renaissance era Madonna
and Child paintings with frames devised to
echo and enhance its pictorial subjects (for
example, in a rounded shape around a halo).
7 Blinky Palermo (1943-1977), influental
German painter, like Knoebel he studied under
Joseph Beuys
8 Most commonly used in text messaging,
at the end of a conversation, the term’s first
recorded use is from 1996, and in 2010 it was
added to the New Oxford American Dictionary.
9 Henri Matisse, in a conversation with
Gaston Diehl, 1945
Notes on Imi Knoebel, Henri Matisse and Colour as a QualityFor Circles & Wigs
Why Colour?
—Manfred Naescher, March 2018
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