Beyond the pale

Bodman, Sarah

Abstract

Beyond the Pale consists of responses invited by the Bodleian Bibliographical Press in parallel to a historical display taking place in the Weston Library – Foreshadowed – curated by Andrew Spira, exploring precursors to Kasimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915), a painting created to bring art history to an end. In Foreshadowed, items drawn from Bodleian Special Collections range from Robert Fludd’s 17th-century representation of the universe as a black square, to the black pages used in mourning the death of a monarch, to use of black pages in 19th-century magazines as an absurdity, a negation of meaning.

As a contemporary equivalent, the prints in Beyond the Pale connect to a range of themes. There are expressions of mourning, of personal loss, of grief for the environment, or anger at political conflict and repression, or playful encouragements to recalibrate our vision of ‘black’. These simple shapes are far from static or lifeless. Several embody references to arts and performance-music, ceramics, drawing, reading, and printing itself. Others, with an inviting tactile surface, tempt the viewer to transgress the square.

• Exhibition Performance Type: Exhibition
• Start Date: Sep 17, 2022
• End Date: Nov 6, 2022
• Deposit Date: Sep 30, 2022
• Keywords: The black page, printmaking, minimalism, spiritualism, automatic writing, psychometry,
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10015231
• Additional Information: Exhibition curated by Alexandra Franklin and Lucy Bayley.; ; https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/event/foreshadowed-malevichs-black-square-and-its-precursors