Obliquement un peu 1987

Curator: Immediately striking! I'm pulled in by these dynamic diagonals—orange, black, gray slicing across the white. It feels raw, energetic, and maybe even a little dangerous. Editor: Indeed. What we're viewing is "Obliquement un peu," which translates to "obliquely a little," created in 1987 by Huguette Arthur Bertrand. The artist worked in acrylic paint, crafting a visual statement through abstraction. Bertrand exhibited widely in the 60s and onward, gaining prominence, particularly in the 80s, during a period of re-evaluation of abstract painting within contemporary art discourses. Curator: Oblique is the perfect description. Those forceful lines feel so precarious. There’s also something elemental about these colors. That blazing orange evokes fire. I'm thinking about volcanic eruptions. Are there precedents in symbolic terms of these colors? Editor: Orange has long been associated with energy, change, warmth – sometimes with warning or hazard depending on context. Black obviously connotes different, more solemn symbolic valences depending on period and place – in the west, certainly linked to death or mourning. The interplay of color then gains its potency when seen in conversation. Bertrand may be channeling primal forces – or, perhaps commenting on something more specific happening socially at the time? Her abstraction evolved within a politicized, highly gendered, Parisian art world after all. Curator: It does lead me to think about the role of the art market too and how artists' statements became such commodifiable attributes of artworks in this period. To what degree are we to interpret pure gesture here? This feels different in some respects, less nihilistic, than what one might expect from a work from the mid-80s. The composition is very careful despite initial appearances. Editor: Perhaps it gestures to both chaos and imposed order. Considering the artwork, I agree, it conveys so much and I found the history both revealing and intriguing.