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
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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....

Hydroforce
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Liz Cohen

2011

From among a cloud of fake smoke we see a heavily pregnant Cohen wearing a bikini and golden stilettos with lace-up straps wrapped around her legs, grasping onto the frame of a modified car as its loud hydraulic system clumsily moves it up and down...

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
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Gareth Moore

2006

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

Sound of Ice Melting
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Paul Kos

1970

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

Glaze (Savana)
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Alexandre da Cunha

2005

Glaze (Savana) (2005) is an assemblage of found materials: a car wheel, a tire, and a wooden plinth of the type traditionally used to display sculpture...

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

Execution Changes #22
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Julian Hoeber

2011

Every work in Hoeber’s 2011 series Execution Changes is titled in alphanumeric code...

VFGY9
© » KADIST

Larry Bell

1979

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

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

Review: Blockbuster Disney Exhibition Digs Deep To Deliver The Magic
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Review: Disney100 Exhibition At ExCeL London | Londonist Review: Blockbuster Disney Exhibition Digs Deep To Deliver The Magic Disney100: The Exhibition, ExCeL London ★★★★☆ By Will Noble Looks like this article is a bit old...

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
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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....

Art Collector to Plant 299 Trees in a Stadium to Protest Inaction About Climate Change - via Hyperallergic
© » LARRY'S LIST

The idea was inspired by a 1970 drawing depicting a forest entrapped in a big city soccer stadium....