Micro-Painting 1968

Here’s Gene Davis’ Micro-Painting, made with paint on what looks like a tiny canvas. It's a piece that really messes with your sense of scale. The canvas has this cool, textured surface, and the white paint is thin enough that you can still see the weave underneath. The red dot is so small but it stands out so much. It's dead centre, like a full stop, and everything else is just field. The simplicity of this piece is kind of mind-blowing. It makes you wonder about the essence of painting itself. What do we really need to make a painting? Is it the grand gesture, the huge canvas? Or can it be distilled down to something as minimal as this? It feels like a conversation with someone like Agnes Martin, who used line and color in a similarly reduced way. Art's just one big conversation, isn't it?