Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void October 8, 2012

Painting the Void, 1949-1962 focuses on destruction as a mode of production in international postwar painting. In Japan, Europe, and the United States, international avant-gardes ripped, cut, and burned the traditionally two-dimensional canvas, staging a literal assault on the picture plane in reaction to the tumultuous political conditions of the time. The exhibition presents an opportunity to reconsider the profound repercussions of this approach in the realm of painting, including artists' early experiments with the materiality of gesture, their emphasis on a rupture between two and three dimensions, and expansion of the medium to incorporate performance, time-based, and assemblage strategies.