Monotype on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/therese-oulton-2205" aria-label="More by Thérèse Oulton" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Thérèse Oulton</a>
Presented by Garner H. Tullis and Pamela Auchincloss 1988
abstraction
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
irregular forms
non-representational
texture
paper print monotype
Untitled
image: 760 × 570 mm
Presented by Garner H. Tullis and Pamela Auchincloss 1988
<p><a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/oulton-untitled-p11198" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11198</span></a> <b>Untitled</b> 1987
<br/>
<br/>Monotype in oil paint 760 × 570 (30 × 22 1/2) on heavy handmade paper, same size; printed by Garner Tullis at Garner Tullis Workshop, Santa Barbara
<br/>Inscribed ‘Thérèse Oulton’ b.r.
<br/>Presented by Garner H. Tullis and Pamela Auchincloss 1988
<br/><i>Lit:</i> Phyllis Plous, ‘Monotype Today’, in <i>Collaborations in Monotype</i>, exh. cat., University Art Museum, Santa Barbara 1988, pp.16, 21, 42; David Cohen, ‘Thérèse Oulton's Printmaking’, <i>Print Quarterly</i>, vol.6, no.4, Dec. 1989, pp.421–39, fig.192</p>
<p><span>P11198</span> has a pronounced central division. In the area to the right the paint has been harshly worked with <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/etching" title="Glossary definition for 'Etching'"><span>etcher</span></a>'s scrim, allowing areas of white <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/paper" title="Glossary definition for 'Paper'"><span>paper</span></a> to show through. By contrast, the area to the left has a rich pattern made up of discrete brushstrokes in a range of colours, including russet, red, orange, green, blue, grey, brown and black. A different type of patterning, with different qualities of brushstrokes, fills the lower third of the image.</p>
<p>This <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/monotype" title="Glossary definition for 'Monotype'"><span>monotype</span></a> was made towards the end of Oulton's fortnight of working at the Garner Tullis Workshop in Santa Barbara in February 1987 (for details, see previous entry on <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/oulton-untitled-p11197" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11197</span></a>). During the greater part of her period there she had used a direct press, but in the last few days she experimented with offset printing. In all, four or five <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/print" title="Glossary definition for 'Print'"><span>prints</span></a>, including <span>P11198</span>, were produced using an offset press (see, for example, ‘Untitled’, 1987, repr. Santa Barbara exh. cat., 1988, p.43 in col.).</p>
<p>Like <span>P11197</span>, <span>P11198</span> was developed from earlier work. In 1985–6 Oulton stayed in Vienna and exhibited there a series of works in which she developed particular aspects of the compositions and use of paint found in the work of such painters as Caravaggio and Rubens. One of these, ‘Taking Sides’, 1986 (repr. <i>Thérèse Oulton</i>, exh. cat., Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna 1986, pl.VII in col.) was the inspiration for <span>P11198</span> (its title, according to the artist, refers to ‘the impossibility of taking sides’). Like <span>P11198</span>, the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> is also bisected vertically, and in conversation with the compiler on 24 February 1994, Oulton explained that to divide a work down the middle or diagonally, rather than, say, using the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/proportion" title="Glossary definition for 'Proportion'"><span>proportions</span></a> of the Golden Section, was expressly ‘anti-<a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/classicism" title="Glossary definition for 'Classicism'"><span>classical</span></a>’. It was a compositional strategy that sprang directly from her study of the asymmetrical structures of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/mannerist" title="Glossary definition for 'Mannerist'"><span>Mannerist</span></a> and <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/b/baroque" title="Glossary definition for 'Baroque'"><span>Baroque</span></a> art.</p>
<p>When working on her <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/monoprint" title="Glossary definition for 'Monoprint'"><span>monoprints</span></a>, Oulton called on her memories of past work. However, she could not use the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/i/impasto" title="Glossary definition for 'Impasto'"><span>textural</span></a> qualities of paint that had been central to the way in which she conveyed the qualities of, say, glass or flesh, in her oil paintings. In conversation she explained, ‘Oil paint has described for so long, that that is what it does. You put oil paint down and it is already descriptive. Oil paint on paper and imprinted at enormous pressure is not tactile like that’. In <span>P11198</span> she felt she had ‘chickened out’, and relied on ‘bits of imagery left or memories of works’. The oval shape at the bottom left of the print, for example, was probably a ‘remnant of a mirror or a glass’. <span>P11198</span> was not, she felt, one of the more successful prints of its type.</p>
<p>The artist has approved this entry.</p>
<p><b>Published in:</b>
<br/><i>Tate Gallery: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions</i> <i>1986-88</i>, London 1996
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-10-14T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
abstraction emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities irregular forms non-representational texture