Entropy, accretion, and l’informe: MFA Thesis - Painting & Drawing
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Author
Loxton, Daniel GrahamReaders/Advisors
Lin, AutumnTerm and Year
Fall 2024Date Published
2024-12
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
In my paper, I will explore how entropy and accretion serve as catalysts in contemporary painting through Georges Bataille’s concept of l’informe (the formless), first published in 1929 in the Surrealist journal Documents, and further developed by Rosalind E. Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois in the 1990s. While entropy—the inevitable dissolution of matter into disorder—and accretion—the gradual accumulation of matter into sedimentary layers—seem antithetical, I will argue that their tension, in relation to l’informe, has played a generative role in art since the birth of Modernism and continues to reverberate in artmaking today. How can painting function both as an indexical mark and as an expressive collaboration with the forces that shape our world and beyond? What slippages, or gaps, remain to be explored by engaging with these phenomena in painting today? Over the course of a month-long residency in Northern Italy, I discovered an unexpected link: dust, as a pervasive, unifying accumulation, and its specific effects on the paintings I made there.Accessibility Statement
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