In the Studio
Free- Artist
- Bram Bogart 1921–2012
- Original title
- Witvlakwit
- Medium
- Mixed media paint on canvas attached to board
- Dimensions
- Support: 2045 × 2790 × 150 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented anonymously in honour of the artist Bram Bogart 2014
- Reference
- T14202
Summary
White Plane White 1974 is a large monochrome white painting by Bram Bogart in which a thick layer of paint has been applied to the surface of the support and pulled to the edges. The middle area of the work remains relatively flat and smooth, with just the margins of each stroke visible, running vertically, with a frame of thick, impasto paint accumulations around the edges.
The work was made after Bogart had moved from Brussels, where his studio had become too small for his work, to Ohain where his work went through another shift. Keeping one of the largest rooms in the Manoir d’Ohain empty, he described how ‘the influence of this emptiness was soon noticeable in my work’ (quoted in Museum voor Moderne Kunst 1995, p.249). At over two metres high and nearly three metres wide, this painting is illustrative of this expansive sense of space. In the 1970s, Bogart said, ‘I started to see how important the borders of a painting were … extending the material over the borders of the painting. It gave me a certain looseness or broad outline.’ (Quoted in Museum voor Moderne Kunst 1995, p.250.)
Bogart began making his first oil paintings in 1939, having worked as a decorator and painter of cinema advertising, and went on to study at the Academy of Fine Art in The Hague. His early influences included the work of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) and the Belgian expressionist Constant Permeke (1886–1952), and in Paris he got to know both Antoni Tapies (1923–2012) and Alberto Burri (1915–1995). In 1955 he saw an exhibition of American art held in Frankfurt in 1955 and another in Paris in 1959, through which he became familiar with the work of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Barnett Newman. These influences inform works such as Threatened Cockerel 1956 (Tate T14201) in its highly gestural near-abstract approach to its figurative subject. Moving from Paris to Rome and then back to Belgium, Bogart’s work went through a number of successive shifts, from early figuration to gesturalism and eventually to a thickly applied surface of pure and dense colour in works such as Rye Summer 1963 (Tate T14203) and the monochrome White Plane White. Through constant experimentation, he developed a distinctive style of painting that nevertheless continually responded to his central preoccupation with the materiality of paint and its application on the picture plane.
Further reading
Bram Bogart: Retrospectief, exhibition catalogue, interview by W. Van den Bussche, PMMK, Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Oostende 1995.
Marcel Paquet, Bram Bogart, Paris 1998, illustrated p.114.
Sam Cornish, Bram Bogart, exhibition catalogue, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London 2011.
Tanya Barson
January 2014
Arthur Goodwin
March 2019
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