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Lot Essay
A hypnotic web of intricately woven lines, Structures for Time is a virtuosic testimony to Mark Tobey’s mastery of optical space. A captivating mesh of white and blue bedecks a dark ground piqued with flecks of lighter paint, creating a textural intensity that draws the viewer into its vibrant alternative reality. Brimming with gestural exuberance, Structures for Time is a vivid example of Tobey’s so-called ‘white writing’, the painterly technique for which he is best known, and a product of his first visit to the Far East in 1934. It was here that Tobey was first exposed to the ancient art of calligraphy, a practice that was to have a profound influence on his work. From here on, Tobey’s work was driven by an obsession with line and its ability to convey both spatial and temporal conditions. Indeed, for Tobey, linearity was to become a kind of language in its own right, generating exquisite plateaus from which discernable forms emerge and recede before our eyes. Premised on the notion that all forms of existence – both natural and cosmopolitan – could be understood as sprawling chains of interconnected elements, Tobey’s work meditates upon the complex structures of the universal. In Structures for Time, the rarefied, luminous quality of Tobey’s line allows us to contemplate the possibility of looking at time under a zoom lens - of observing the invisible, and giving contour to the infinite.
Executed in 1959, the work is situated at a seminal moment in the artist’s career: between winning the International Painting Prize at the 1958 Venice Biennale and his prestigious retrospective at the Palais du Louvre in 1961. As Judith S. Kays notes, Tobey was the first living American to be honoured with the latter, and the first since Whistler to achieve the former (J. S. Kays, ‘Mark Tobey and Jackson Pollock: Setting the Record Straight’ in Mark Tobey, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1997, p. 91). In his ‘white writings’, critics have furthermore identified the roots of American modernist painting – in particular Abstract Expressionism - highlighting his technical innovation as an important source of inspiration for artists from Jackson Pollock to Sam Francis. It is significant, however, that Tobey’s national acclaim was fundamentally a product of his international outlook. Representing America in Europe, yet with his head firmly turned towards the East, Tobey’s artistic practice is truly global in its orientation.
Executed in 1959, the work is situated at a seminal moment in the artist’s career: between winning the International Painting Prize at the 1958 Venice Biennale and his prestigious retrospective at the Palais du Louvre in 1961. As Judith S. Kays notes, Tobey was the first living American to be honoured with the latter, and the first since Whistler to achieve the former (J. S. Kays, ‘Mark Tobey and Jackson Pollock: Setting the Record Straight’ in Mark Tobey, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1997, p. 91). In his ‘white writings’, critics have furthermore identified the roots of American modernist painting – in particular Abstract Expressionism - highlighting his technical innovation as an important source of inspiration for artists from Jackson Pollock to Sam Francis. It is significant, however, that Tobey’s national acclaim was fundamentally a product of his international outlook. Representing America in Europe, yet with his head firmly turned towards the East, Tobey’s artistic practice is truly global in its orientation.