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Red Canvas, from the classic series of cloth octagonals, exemplifies the artist’s unassuming aesthetic and his uncanny ability to create rich, resonant artworks with the least amount of actual material content. The work is essentially an eight-sided canvas with edges folded over and sewn down. Lacking a rigid wooden stretcher support, it is not displayed like a standard painting but is tacked to the wall at eight points around its perimeter or casually laid on the floor, a second display option specified by the artist. Technically it is not a painting at all, as it was not made with pigment, a fundamental element of the traditional medium. Pigment attaches to the surface of other materials, usually aided by a binder such as oil or acrylic, but the soft, offbeat burgundy color of Tuttle’s octagon derives from liquid dye, which soaked into the fiber of the canvas, becoming one with it...
:: Jonathan P. Binstock, Curator of Contemporary Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art |
Text excerpted from A Capital Collection: Masterworks from
the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
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:: The Curator's Journals Project
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