Week #21, Monochrome Works IV

Untitled (Black & White Forms), 1965, ink on paper, 17 ¾” x 11 ¾”

This week’s work on paper by Dusti Bongé concludes our series of monochrome works with delicate thin ink lines. And it offers a slight variation on this theme. In this piece, Dusti combines the sinuous lines with just a few heavy brush strokes. This creates an unexpected interplay between various elements in the composition.

These various elements include three abstract looped forms, consisting of a roughly ovoid shape on a vertical pole, which Dusti employs in several different modes. All three versions vaguely hint at trees, or perhaps cotton candy on a stick. There is the dominating black form in broad, solid, black marks on the right, the more delicate white form in thin black outlines to its left, and finally, the smaller form above it, created in both thin swirling back and forth lines and a heavier mark for its pole. Given the very different modes of expression, the recurring shape does not create a sense of repetition but rather a sense of variation.

Meanwhile, weaving in between all three forms are various layers of horizontal hatch lines which ground the otherwise floating shapes. The overlaps between the shapes and their respective relationships to the “ground” create a sense of perspective depth not commonly encountered in abstract expressionist work. However, this perspectival quality is not at all belabored but rather seems to just happens.

And indeed, one of the hallmarks of the abstract expressionist movement was the direct and spontaneous application of the medium to the canvas. The final product was not to be the outcome of a premeditated idea or planned process. This work certainly exemplifies that attitude.