Artwork
Untitled
Untitled is an ink print by Carroll Dunham. It dates from 1988 and is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
About this work
Overview
Created in 1988, this untitled lithograph is one of a set of five prints produced by American artist Carroll Dunham. The work is part of the Museum of Modern Art’s collection and exemplifies Dunham’s practice of juxtaposing vivid, seemingly chaotic color fields with gestural line work, resulting in a composition that resists recognizable forms.
Subject & Meaning
The image presents an unstructured arrangement of bright red, yellow, and green shapes that intersect and overlap without depicting identifiable figures. The lack of conventional subject matter invites viewers to consider the tension between abstraction and suggestion, a recurring concern in Dunham’s oeuvre, where visual disorder functions as a conceptual inquiry into perception and composition.
Technique & Style
This method allows for rapid, expressive gestures that retain the tactile qualities of drawing while exploiting the reproducible nature of printmaking.
Executed through lithography, the artist applied ink to a prepared stone surface and transferred it onto paper, forgoing brushwork entirely. The resulting marks convey immediacy, with thick, saturated areas contrasting against thin, wavering strokes. This method allows for rapid, expressive gestures that retain the tactile qualities of drawing while exploiting the reproducible nature of printmaking.
History & Provenance
Carroll Dunham, born in 1949, emerged on the art scene in the late 1970s and attracted critical notice during the 1980s, a decade that saw renewed interest in painting. The lithograph was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, where it remains in the permanent collection, documenting a pivotal moment in the artist’s printmaking activities.
Context
The work aligns with a broader 1980s movement in which many artists revisited painterly concerns through alternative media. Dunham’s lithographs reflect this trend by translating his painterly language—characterized by bold color and gestural markmaking—into the print medium, thereby expanding the dialogue between abstraction and figuration within contemporary art.
Artist & collection
Artist
Carroll Dunham (born November 5, 1949) is an American painter. Working since the late 1970s, Dunham's career reached critical renown in the 1980s when he first exhibited with Baskerville + Watson, a decade during which…
