Dimensions: object: 1221 x 1158 x 13 mm frame: 1540 x 1536 x 68 mm
Copyright: © Tate | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Victor Pasmore’s Black Abstract at the Tate is a large piece, over a meter square. What strikes you first about it? Editor: It feels like a swarm, like a dark cloud of... something organic, maybe bees, struggling to lift off of a golden field. Curator: That's interesting, considering Pasmore’s evolution from representational landscapes to total abstraction. He embraced new materials, moving beyond traditional painting. Editor: It does have a sculptural quality, doesn't it? Those raised dots, like a topographical map of some alien planet. How did the public receive this shift in his work? Curator: Initially, there was resistance. Abstraction was still finding its place, but Pasmore became a leading figure, pushing the boundaries of British art. It’s hard to imagine now, but abstract art was once radical. Editor: Radically open, perhaps. I look at it now, and I see not just an object, but a record of someone's mind working through form and space. Curator: Exactly, and that's its enduring power. Editor: Yes, a brave experiment that still asks us questions about how we see.
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Pasmore originally called this relief Black Abstract – Growing Form, reflecting how its composition, like much of Pasmore’s work, was based on ideas of organic development. The dominant motif is the progressive build-up of black blotches painted directly onto untreated chipboard – the blotches expanding as they extend down from the top edge of the board. Although the idea of progressivedevelopment from a single motif can be traced to the influence of Paul Klee (1879–1940), Pasmore had also been engaged by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s On Growth and Form - when republished in 1942, it influenced Pasmore and many of his contemporaries. Gallery label, September 2016
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