Four Interrelated Colour Groups 1968

Editor: This is Richard Paul Lohse’s “Four Interrelated Colour Groups” from 1968. It’s made of oil on canvas, and features blocks of color that overlap to create a sort of cross-like pattern. It strikes me as incredibly clean and almost industrial. How do you interpret this work? Curator: For me, the painting is a fascinating example of the industrial influence on art production. Think about the materials themselves: oil paint, canvas. By '68, these aren’t simply handcrafted. They're products of large-scale chemical industries and textile mills. Editor: That’s an interesting perspective, it makes sense! So, the colors chosen here weren't about expressing the artist’s feelings, but were about…what exactly? Curator: It's less about the personal and more about standardization and the means of producing color itself. How readily accessible are these colors? Are they off-the-shelf shades? The very concept of 'interrelated' speaks to systems of color production and consumerism in that era, and the means to an end for cultural output. Editor: So you are saying, that an approach where we consider this painting as just a visual aesthetic exercise misses a bigger point around production and labor? Curator: Precisely. What happens to art when its materiality is inherently linked to broader industrial processes? How does it reflect or critique consumerism in its very being? Editor: I see! Looking at it now, I see beyond just the neat arrangement of color and it's almost critical and distant. I was only thinking about the art, but not the making. Curator: And that distance, I’d argue, reflects the alienation inherent in mass production. We see the beautiful surface but maybe miss the systems of labor and material extraction that underpin it. A reminder that how art is made reflects how society is made.