Untitled

- Painting (Painting)

John McCracken

year born: 1934
gender: male
nationality: American
home town: Berkeley, California

Though not strictly representational, some objects in Untitled (1962) are recognizable: a flower, an egg, a foot. The arrows and directional lines suggest movement, but the forms they point to intertwine, prohibiting a straightforward reading. The shapes are as illustrative as a Rorschach inkblot; in their confounding, simple indeterminacy, they depict nothing and everything at once.


Born in Berkeley and educated at California College of the Arts, John McCracken was a pioneer of American Minimalism and is often associated with the Light and Space movement. His plank pieces—high-gloss, lacquered, monochromatic monoliths that lean against the wall—defy the boundary between painting and sculpture, object and viewer. Their bases rest in the observer’s space, and their varnished surfaces reflect the surrounding environment. Though best known for his bright colors and polished aesthetic, McCracken’s body of work is diverse, ranging from minimalist sculpture to abstract painting. The work is consistently characterized by a search for simplicity, beauty, and the sublime.


Colors:



Untitled (Construction)
© » KADIST

Larry Bell

2007

Untitled (Construction) recalls the series of glass cubes that gained Bell international recognition in the 1960s...

VFGY9
© » KADIST

Larry Bell

1979

Like many of Larry Bell’s works, VFGY9 deals primarily with the viewer’s experience of sight...

South Africa Righteous Space
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Hank Willis Thomas

2014

South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....

Related works featuring themes of: » Abstract Sculpture, » Columns and Totems, » Light and Space Movement, » Line, Form and Color, » American  
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Map (from Uncertain Pilgrimage), 2006-2009
© » KADIST

Gareth Moore

2006

Uncertain Pilgrimage is an ongoing project in which Moore draws from his unplanned travels in recent years...

Sound of Ice Melting
© » KADIST

Paul Kos

1970

Sound of Ice Melting is based on the ancient Zen Buddhist koan about the sound of one hand clapping...

Lightning
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Paul Kos

1976

Parked on the shoulder of a single lane highway running through a desert landscape, Marlene looks over her shoulder from inside the car at a fierce storm looming over a distant horizon...

Towhead n’Ganga enclosed in darkness, lorded over by the sexualized folded high priestless form
© » KADIST

Mike Kelley

1996

Towhead n’Ganga, enclosed in darkness, lorded over by the sexualized folded high priestless form reflects many of Kelley’s works, in both its compositional and semantic qualities...

Other related works, blended automatically  
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Map (from Uncertain Pilgrimage), 2006-2009
© » KADIST

Gareth Moore

2006

Uncertain Pilgrimage is an ongoing project in which Moore draws from his unplanned travels in recent years...

Sound of Ice Melting
© » KADIST

Paul Kos

1970

Sound of Ice Melting is based on the ancient Zen Buddhist koan about the sound of one hand clapping...

Collapse
© » KADIST

Will Rogan

2007

Shot in the streets of Tokyo, Collapse , is a meditation on the passing of time and on the complicated way in which we are smashed between the past and the future...

Bunny’s Sofa
© » KADIST

Gimhongsok

2007

To explore the boundaries between artwork and audience, Gimhongsok created a series of sculptural performances in which a person wearing an animal costume poses in the gallery...

Related works sharing similar palette  
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Illusion of Matter
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Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa

2015

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa’s performance Illusion of Matter establishes a dream state through a composition of motifs that were drawn from the artist’s childhood memories...

A Look Inside ‘A Love Supreme’ at Chicago’s Elmhurst Art Museum
© » OBSERVER

Review: ‘A Love Supreme’ at Elmhurst Art Museum | Observer Norman Teague...

‘Art Has Kept People Going Through the Pandemic’, Says Collector Kiran Nadar, Founder of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
© » LARRY'S LIST

London’s Tate Modern encouraged visitors to browse through its digitised collection of over 77 thousand artworks, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art produced 360° virtual tours of its spaces and, closer home, the National Museum in New Delhi kept up with its patrons through regular informative posts on Instagram....

The Collectors Who Lent Two Dozen Allegedly Fake Artworks to a Major Belgian Museum Have Been Arrested - via artnet
© » LARRY'S LIST

Igor and Olga Toporovsky, who lent purported fakes to a major Belgian museum show, were taken into custody late last month by police....

Related artist(s) to: John McCracken » Donald Judd, » Bruce Nauman, » Dan Flavin, » Larry Bell, » Sol Lewitt, » Andrea Bellini, » Carl Andre, » Christopher Williams, » Lawrence Weiner, » Rodney Graham  
» see more

Tree on the Former Site of Camera Obscura
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Rodney Graham

1996

Tree on the Former Site of Camera Obscura (1996) belongs to a series of large-scale photographs of trees taken by Graham and depicts a particular species that lives in Northern California...

Ponderosa Pine IV
© » KADIST

Rodney Graham

1991

Ponderosa Pine IV belongs to a series of large-scale photographs of trees taken by Graham and depicts a particular species that live in Northern California...

Untitled (Construction)
© » KADIST

Larry Bell

2007

Untitled (Construction) recalls the series of glass cubes that gained Bell international recognition in the 1960s...

VFGY9
© » KADIST

Larry Bell

1979

Like many of Larry Bell’s works, VFGY9 deals primarily with the viewer’s experience of sight...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Ballerina
© » KADIST

Liu Yin

2010

Liu Yin brings the tension of a small but imminent catastrophe into the gallery with a raw egg balanced on the edge of a folding table....

The artist who chronicled a generation lost to AIDS
© » I-D VICE PHOTO

The artist who chronicled a generation lost to AIDS advertisement...

Perspective
© » KADIST

Anna Molska

2006

Perspective was filmed during a residence in northern Poland...