Week #25, Black & White IV

Dusti Bongé, Untitled (Black Abstract with White Circle), 1988, Ink and gouache on paper, 7 ½” x 5”.

This next piece from the series of black & white works is from the 1980s. Here again Dusti Bongé explores a different stylistic approach from the previous works. Starting with the well-defined ink line of the 1950s drawing, to the aggressive strokes of the 1960 piece, to the more rhythmic, linear composition of the 1970s work, we now land in the 1980s, Dusti’s incredibly prolific last decade of her career.

The decade marks her continually evolving approach to abstraction in various subtle ways.

One shift occurs in the way she availed herself of various geometric shapes likes circles, rectangles, and trapezoids. Although she continued to use these familiar shapes, their purpose in the creative process is transformed. In many of Dusti’s previous iterations of abstraction these forms were mostly employed as compositional tools, at the scale of a larger framework to allow for her impressive mark making. But now, these very shapes become the primary focus of the work, they are the subject matter and no longer serve as an underlying structure.

Another hallmark of this time period is that she created hundreds and hundreds of very small abstract gems. And in these modestly scaled works she somehow manages to combine the energetic, overpowering energy of her large abstract paintings with the quiet intimacy of a carefully curated moment.

Yet a third shift to note is a different material approach with a lot more mixing of media such as ink (including lacquer ink), watercolor, tempera, acrylic, gouache, and the addition of collaged elements to her work. She also availed herself of a rich variety of papers.

This small black & white work is predominantly dark with various energetic black ink lines and marks. But there are two distinct, slightly tilted, white ovals, one in the upper right outlined in white, and one in lower left in solid white. They are painted thinly over the dark ink, presumably when it was still drying. The resulting mix of black ink and white gouache is a very translucent, cool, almost blueish gray.