Painting with Four Square Holes 1991

Alan Charlton made this painting, with its four square holes, as part of a generation that questioned the status of painting. The art world had become a self-regulating institution. The question for artists in Britain was whether painting had become a redundant and elitist cultural form. Charlton’s gray monochrome challenges conventional notions of what a painting should be. It offers no narrative, no illusion, only the material fact of its own making. By reducing painting to its bare essentials, Charlton invited viewers to reconsider the act of seeing itself. Does art need to be ‘complex’ to be art? Or can it simply exist as an object, prompting us to reflect on our own perceptions and expectations? To fully understand this artwork, we might consult artists' manifestos and contemporary art criticism, resources that shed light on the artistic debates of the time. It’s in this wider context of social and institutional critique that we can begin to grasp the radical nature of Charlton's intervention.