The Soil 1990

Editor: This is "The Soil," painted by Benny Andrews in 1990, using acrylic paint. I’m struck by the contrast between the very detailed lower section of the painting and the stark white background. What do you see in this piece, especially regarding its composition? Curator: Indeed. Formally, the work establishes a dichotomy through figure and ground. Andrews contrasts the representational with the abstract. The detailed lower register presents a verdant, almost chaotic proliferation of organic forms and colors, while the upper portion negates depth through planar expanse, establishing what we might term negative space through use of color. Editor: So, the whiteness is more than just background? Curator: Precisely. The composition creates a tension, the details demanding visual engagement and the blank space resisting easy interpretation. How does the figure function within this dichotomy? Note how its position to the right allows for this use of depth as related to perspective; that is, the ground takes precedence. Editor: He’s holding a sprout, so he seems to connect those two halves, tying detail with abstraction? Curator: In a way, yes. Semiotically, we observe a unification and separation as a formal dynamic; it makes us reconsider figure/ground relationships and perspectival hierarchies, suggesting, perhaps, cyclical readings that the soil is a place where a lack of detail, a blank canvas, provides potential. What do you make of that idea of potential, using the canvas itself? Editor: That's interesting. It highlights how something new emerges from the seemingly barren. Thanks for that new point of view! Curator: It has been my pleasure. And that perhaps we are primed for life and potential, though that must still be achieved through individual, directed actions, such as planting the sprout that must continue.