Dark Ochre with Black Border 1973

Curator: Looking at Peter Joseph’s "Dark Ochre with Black Border" from 1973. There is a sense of serenity, don't you think? Like gazing at a desert landscape under a hazy sky. Editor: My first thought? It’s brown. Seriously, though, the black border emphasizes the expanse of the ochre field. Makes me wonder about the materials – was the ochre custom mixed, a specific pigment from a particular locale, reflecting something beyond simple aesthetics? Curator: Perhaps the pigment itself carries a memory. Joseph's abstraction is an attempt to capture a feeling, rather than represent something concrete. A resonance in color, if you will. Think about what the color brown means, of being grounded, or even mired down, then seeing this almost monochrome rectangle hovering, wanting freedom... It’s heartbreaking, or heartening. Editor: Color association is all well and good, but the physical construction tells a different story. That careful taping, the even distribution of paint, suggests a real tension between industrial processes and pure, abstract expression. How did Joseph balance the handmade with the machine-made? That border isn’t just visual; it's a decision about labor. Curator: Maybe he chose it intuitively! Remember Joseph’s writings: a belief in a transcendent aesthetic experience, a pure vision emerging from simple forms. That’s hard labor, indeed, not in terms of mechanics but emotionally and spiritually. Editor: Agreed about emotional labor, and of course those intentions are visible and valuable. But how does that stack up against, say, the history of ochre as a pigment? Its use by so many diverse societies as protection or adornment? Surely this is connected to ideas about taste and how things come into our space... it could be a really exciting jumping off point. Curator: It sounds as if the simple forms open to the past through material use, yet soar to spiritual places, don't you think? A contradiction that Joseph revelled in. Editor: Well, looking more closely at the painting after our discussion, I'm considering that there might just be more to "simple" brown than meets the eye...