Untitled, 1995. Color lithograph. 44.5 x 50.5. Edition of 50
In Jacqualine Humphries, Untitled (1995), we see an interest in three modes of operation—motif, repetition, and variation. The first, motif, provides an entry into the work and acts as the major element of the “drawing” in the print. We see a dot, or a smudge, or a circular ring as variants of the same motif—a marker to hold the space.
What creates at first an overall glimmer to the piece is the sensation of these dots shifting in a seemingly random field before our eyes. Humphries has used the dot in previous work as a way to create an all-over field, but in this print we see some important shifts in its use and meaning.
The print is made up of four panels hung together with a slight space in between. Each panel is divided vertically into two unequal areas of color, the upper right panel being the only exception (in this panel there are three areas of color). The gray of the panels to the right and almost half of the left panel combine visually to create a larger field, dividing the entire print into two areas, one blue and one gray. Humphries plays with our notions of part and whole, asymmetry and balance. The repetition of the divisions sets the stage for the artist’s elaboration of the motif.
As we observe the print from top to bottom, we become aware of how the gestures themselves are being duplicated. The marks in black on the top and lower left panels are the same. The marks on the top and lower right panels are also the same. The artist has chosen to print the same marks on different grounds. Why does she do this? Since the time of Abstract Expressionism, the gestural mark has been posited as the receiver-transmitter of the artist’s emotions and expression. Through duplication, the artist shows that the gesture acts alone—as the “thing in itself”—and does not hold meaning outside of itself. Robert Rauschenberg, in his Factum I and Factum II paintings (1957), demonstrates the reproducibility of the gestural mark. He makes an exact copy, stroke for stroke, of a combined painting. In this act, Rauschenberg empties the gesture of its meaning as an original and unique event. Humphries’ similar interest in the sublimation of the gesture triggers a new reading of the print.
Having become hyper-aware as to how repetition is a mode of operation in the print, we begin to look for rifts in the system. In each panel, density is altered by the addition or removal of the repeated field of marks. In the upper left, a perfect black semi-circle is placed on the far left edge of the page, the completion of which is found on the far right edge of the upper right panel, as if the print, if brought edge to edge, would continue to infinity. A swath of gesture is present in the upper blue panel, but absent in the lower blue panel. A strip of gray on the left of the upper right panel, marked by four red dots, breaks the overall repetition. Playing this game of hide and seek, the artist never fully reveals her intentions. We are invited to complete the circle, to follow the path of the artist and continue on our own.
– Andrew Mockler