Week #11, Thinking in Color III

Dusti Bongé, Untitled (Black Grid with Blue, Purple and Green), 1975, mixed media on board, 11” x 8 1/8”.

I guess this week is a good opportunity to feature green in our Thinking in Color series. However, this is no Kelly green. And although there is not a lot of green in this composition, it nonetheless stands out as the dominant color.

This work from the 1970s is part of a group of studies Dusti Bongé did of gridded compositions. During this time there were other artists who were exploring abstraction through the sometimes visible, sometimes invisible rigid structure of the grid. However, what they sought through using grids was not primarily an organizing framework, but rather a neutral ground which could be subjected to different manipulations.

Dusti’s gridded works vary in what manipulations she subjected them to. She would often employ the grid as something to be looked through. By using its framework this way she is offering us a window to what lies beyond the gridded pattern. The grid may well be in the foreground, but it is not the focal element of the composition. It may be the figure, but it is the voids that matter. That is certainly the case in this work. Despite the very heavy black grid, it is the colors shining through it that command attention.

Dusti’s grid is two columns wide and 3 rows high. It sits just off center of its vertical axis on the page, with its left edge partially “falling” off the edge of the paper, leaving a narrow vertical strip of space along the right. Along the top and bottom there each remain narrow spaces as well. The latter are filled with a muted blue swath of watercolor. But the sliver of space on the right is filled with a warm green, made luminous through just a hint of yellow. The green and blue reoccur in the six voids, at times accented with purple. As such, each void is its own little composition.