Cage and Acconci: The transformation of the relationship between artwork and audience.
Simon Hantai
In U.S. People thought minimalism was the end to painting. That painting is an exhausted medium. In France however, minimalism was viewed as something to be dealt with within painting. Is does not represent the end of painting. At the forefront of this movement was Simon Hantai, a Hungarian. He is known for inventing Pliage (to fold) in France. From 1960 to 1982, he works exclusively on canvas that is off the wooden frame and wadded up, crumbled up. He then paints the canvas like this and opens it up. He sums all his painterly ambitions as an attempt to make painting exceptionally banal, ordinary. Intially very poor, looked at geometrical abstraction and gestural abstraction. He is interested in making painting that exceeds his conscious control, his conscious intention so that what is reveled is a surprise to him. He takes several features from Mathieu's work. The aesthetics of speed and painting in an altered state are ideals of Mathiew which Hantai takes interest in. Hantai tried to take over Mathieu's ideas while building a mechanisms that allows the work to surprise him. Hantai's answer to Pollock was the creation of Pliage. A new way of getting paint on the canvas. In Meun he alters his technique using knots in the canvas and flattening it out, creating mushroom shapes. This results in larger paint ares and also larger non-painted areas or white space. Ewventaully the white space becomes the most important part of Pliage. In pliage the non painted areas are no longer a neutral space, the white parts become a critical component of the work. The white areas lets the painted areas breathe. Hantai's Meun share great similarities with some of Matisee's work which place an emphasis on negative space. Additionally, the non-painted spaces are placed where he did not touch and thus could not compose them. Hantai's lifelong aspiration was to free painting from its author. He wanted for painting not to be only for the notionally gifted invdividuals
In U.S. People thought minimalism was the end to painting. That painting is an exhausted medium. In France however, minimalism was viewed as something to be dealt with within painting. Is does not represent the end of painting. At the forefront of this movement was Simon Hantai, a Hungarian. He is known for inventing Pliage (to fold) in France. From 1960 to 1982, he works exclusively on canvas that is off the wooden frame and wadded up, crumbled up. He then paints the canvas like this and opens it up. He sums all his painterly ambitions as an attempt to make painting exceptionally banal, ordinary. Intially very poor, looked at geometrical abstraction and gestural abstraction. He is interested in making painting that exceeds his conscious control, his conscious intention so that what is reveled is a surprise to him. He takes several features from Mathieu's work. The aesthetics of speed and painting in an altered state are ideals of Mathiew which Hantai takes interest in. Hantai tried to take over Mathieu's ideas while building a mechanisms that allows the work to surprise him. Hantai's answer to Pollock was the creation of Pliage. A new way of getting paint on the canvas. In Meun he alters his technique using knots in the canvas and flattening it out, creating mushroom shapes. This results in larger paint ares and also larger non-painted areas or white space. Ewventaully the white space becomes the most important part of Pliage. In pliage the non painted areas are no longer a neutral space, the white parts become a critical component of the work. The white areas lets the painted areas breathe. Hantai's Meun share great similarities with some of Matisee's work which place an emphasis on negative space. Additionally, the non-painted spaces are placed where he did not touch and thus could not compose them. Hantai's lifelong aspiration was to free painting from its author. He wanted for painting not to be only for the notionally gifted invdividuals