Artwork
Untitled
Untitled is a charcoal drawing by Carroll Dunham. It dates from 1985 and is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
About this work
Overview
The piece exemplifies Dunham’s early‑career interest in the tension between gestural abstraction and crude figurative suggestion.
Created in 1985, this untitled work by American artist Carroll Dunham combines casein, synthetic polymer paint, emulsion, pencil, charcoal, ink, felt‑tip pen and linen tape applied to a wooden support. The composition presents a loosely rendered, textured field punctuated by two ambiguous, shadow‑like figures that emerge from a chaotic overlay of marks and color. The piece exemplifies Dunham’s early‑career interest in the tension between gestural abstraction and crude figurative suggestion.
Subject & Meaning
The image contains two indistinct silhouettes: a larger, hunched form outlined with jagged lines and splattered pigment, and a smaller, partially concealed shape obscured by dense black strokes. The figures resist narrative identification, functioning more as visual ideas than literal representations. Their presence amid a turbulent surface invites viewers to consider the interplay of presence and absence, and the way informal mark‑making can evoke bodily suggestion without explicit detail.
Technique & Style
Dunham employs a mixed‑media approach, layering casein and polymer paints with emulsion washes, then drawing over the surface with pencil, charcoal, ink and felt‑tip pen. Strips of linen tape are adhered to create hard edges that contrast with the surrounding soft, smeared areas. The resulting surface oscillates between gestural, graffiti‑like marks and more controlled, almost cartoonish outlines, reflecting the artist’s habit of merging abstraction with a crude, figurative vocabulary.
History & Provenance
The work belongs to the period when many artists in the 1980s returned to painting after a decade dominated by conceptual and minimalist practices. It entered the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, where it remains part of the institution’s holdings of post‑minimalist and neo‑expressionist works, documenting Dunham’s contribution to the era’s renewed interest in painterly experimentation.
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…
