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Untitled

A work made of oil and collage on canvas.
© 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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  • A work made of oil and collage on canvas.

Date:

1964

Artist:

Mark Tobey
American, 1890-1976

About this artwork

Untitled effectively embodies its maker’s goal of melding Eastern calligraphy and Western drawing. Mark Tobey studied brushwork in China and Japan, where he lived for a while in a Zen monastery. Around 1935 Tobey arrived at his distinctive “white writing,” or intricate networks of calligraphic marks that densely and evenly animate a surface. When viewed from a distance, these dabs and dashes of pigment interspersed with short, overlapping lines—create a writhing, unified field of energy. In Untitled the subdued palette of lavender, white, gray, black, and burgundy functions similarly—the innumerable strokes and marks only become distinct from close-up. A smoothly painted border, which appears in much of Tobey’s oeuvre, surrounds and offsets the vibrating center. The artist felt that his delicate, teeming webs of “living line” mirrored the connections between East and West, finite and infinite, humanity and the cosmos.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Contemporary Art

Artist

Mark Tobey

Title

Untitled

Place

United States (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1964

Medium

Oil and collage on canvas

Dimensions

212.1 × 157 cm (83 1/2 × 61 13/16 in.)

Credit Line

Grant J. Pick Purchase Fund

Reference Number

1965.359

Copyright

© 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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