![\"Tammi](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/114_DO_Loubier_Tammi-Campbell_VicHeroicusSublimis_2018.jpg\")
Vir Heroicus Sublimis,<\/em> 241,3 \u00d7 541 cm, installation view, Blouin Division, Toronto, 2018.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Blouin Division, Montr\u00e9al & Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
In these works, abstraction seems to be put in quotes, as when one says \u201ctable\u201d in order to refer to the word<\/em> itself rather than to an actual table. The linguistic distinction between \u201cusage\u201d and \u201creference\u201d allows us to differentiate between practices that refer to abstraction (as content) and those that use it(as stylistic form or \u201clanguage\u201d). Stella painted abstractly<\/em> when he created Gran Cairo<\/em> (1962), whereas Sturtevant painted abstraction<\/em> when she remade this work (Stella Gran Cairo<\/em>, 1988). Their two almost-identical1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - Sturtevant doesn\u2019t create true copies; intentional flaws subtly distinguish her works from their models.<\/span> works can be described as abstract, but Sturtevant\u2019s Stella Gran Cairo<\/em> is radically different from its model because it is a copy\u200a\u2014\u200aor even better, an appropriation. Stella uses abstraction as a pictorial language; Sturtevant refers to it through the postmodern language of appropriation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A typical modernist work, Gran Cairo<\/em> is determined by strict pictorial parameters such as flatness and the format of the support\u200a\u2014\u200aa square from which the painted structure, which reverberates the form to the centre of the painting, seems to be \u201cdeduced.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Michael Fried, Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella<\/em> (Cambridge: Fogg Art Museum, 1965).<\/span> The work refers only to what it visibly shows, in keeping with the propensity for autonomy that broadly motivated abstraction in art in the twentieth century. In contrast, Stella Gran Cairo<\/em> signifies only in reference to something else: a painting quickly inducted into the pantheon of modernist art, of which it is a copy, and the artistic (almost exclusively male) canon that assimilated it. Its signification relies more on the social phenomenon of artistic recognition than on the painting medium. In other words, the meaning of Stella Gran Cairo<\/em> resides more in the canonical status achieved by Stella\u2019s work than in its painted geometric configuration (as is the case for Gran Cairo<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stella Gran Cairo<\/em> is not only a replica of a work but also Sturtevant\u2019s \u201cresponse\u201d to the artistic institution, pointing out the ideological biases of art history writing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Chinese-born artist Evelyn Taocheng Wang takes a more ambivalent stance. In the painting series Do Not Agree with Agnes Martin All the Time<\/em> (2022\u201323), <\/em>the abstraction of the Canadian-American painter Agnes Martin\u2019s works that Wang imitates seems to have been both subjected to a rigorous copying exercise and subverted by a curious insertion of textual and figurative elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Mini Shanghai Pak choi with Toothpick and Imitation of Agnes Martin<\/em> (2022), handwritten text is superimposed on the horizontal strips of Martin\u2019s Untitled #15<\/em> (1980): \u201cI was wondering if Agnes Martin ever had Mini Shanghai Pak choi too?\u201d Near the bottom of the painting, this question is echoed by an image of Chinese cabbages pierced with a toothpick. Other works also feature short texts: Sugar Powder Bamboo and Imitation of Agnes Martin<\/em> (2023)describes Wang\u2019s childhood memory about her grandmother and painting bamboo in a traditional Chinese painting class; Makeup Remover Cotton Pads and Imitation of Agnes Martin<\/em> (2023) transmits reflections on cosmetics and technical aspects of painting, punctuated by the representation of several cotton makeup-remover pads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even as Wang forces herself to remake Martin\u2019s paintings, the writing, narrativity, and realism of the images that she grafts onto them undeniably disrupt the ascetic rigour and silence of their minimalist frameworks. What is truly striking, however, is that the abstract integrity of the originals is not compromised. Regardless of the discrepancy between the anecdotic or highly personal aspect of the content and the austere composition of the imitated painter, Wang never lapses into irreverence or trivial and gratuitous appropriation. Rather, it is the seriousness of the work and the candour of a memory or an impromptu thought caught on the fly that the paintings\u2019 polished style and the figures\u2019 didactic realism bring out, reminiscent of an object lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, compared to the scale of Mini Shanghai Pak choi with Toothpick <\/em>(which reproduces the dimensions of Untitled #15<\/em>: 1.85 metres per side), the text mentioned above, written in small letters, is only a subtle detail at first. Even with the more imposing text in Makeup Remover Cotton Pads<\/em>, the regular sequencing of the words, in vertical columns, eschews any conflict with the underlying geometric structure. All textual and figurative elements are integrated harmoniously into Martin\u2019s pictorial space without marring it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lastly, Wang describes her paintings inspired by this reclusive painter as \u201cimitations,\u201d a recurring term in their titles. An \u201cimitation of Agnes Martin\u201d suggests an intention to copy not only the painter\u2019s work but also her style and artistic approach. By superimposing her own narrative content, therefore, Wang\u2019s appropriation of her model\u2019s works does not proceed from as expressly critical an aim as Sturtevant\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wang creates a palimpsest rather than a pure copy; abstraction is referenced but also practised<\/em> and is more fully active in her work; her personal investment in the copy departs from the critique of originality that, in the wake of Roland Barthes\u2019s \u201cdeath of the author,\u201d fuelled conceptual art and the Picture Generation with which Sturtevant is associated. In Wang\u2019s work, we find a nostalgic imitation and a firm decontextualization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although Campbell made Martin a guiding figure, here I am interested in Campbell\u2019s trompe-l\u2019oeil replicas of wrapped abstract paintings, which show another referential yet more paradoxical form: a figurative form of abstract works. Created in the past few years, these series of paintings focus on work by artists in the modernist canon mentioned above\u200a\u2014\u200aMorris Louis, Stella, and especially Josef Albers\u200a\u2014\u200abased on which Campbell has made several works titled Homage to the Square with Bubble Wrap and Packing Tape<\/em> (ongoing since 2017). However, the replicas of their recognizable paintings appear to be wrapped in plastic\u200a\u2014\u200awhich turns out to be acrylic paint assiduously applied to imitate bubble wrap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The paintings reproduced in this manner, therefore, are not made visible in themselves<\/em>, like Sturtevant\u2019s and Wang\u2019s, but are instead staged. By showing an Homage to the Square<\/em> painting under the trompe-l\u2019oeil of a protective plastic cover, Campbell\u2019s work appears not simply as the replica of a painting but as the replica of a wrapped painting. Whereas Wang\u2019s and Sturtevant\u2019s replicas remain mostly abstractions<\/em> to perception, Campbell\u2019s tip into representation<\/em>: the paint medium imitates both the painting as a concrete object and the painted configuration for which it is the support. Through this simultaneously technical and rhetorical method, Campbell reintroduces figuration into a paradigm defined by its very rejection of it: the abstract work is therefore estranged from itself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n In addition to these works\u2019 caustic homage to their models and their critical reconsideration of the modernist heritage, art critics have also emphasized their feminist dimension. Leah Ollman writes that these paintings possibly \u201csignal a more revolutionary intent, that it\u2019s time to mute these masterpieces, all by men, to put them in storage and make room for something new, perhaps something by the hands of women.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Leah Ollman, \u201cTammi Campbell Messes with Art\u2019s Canon: Think Baldessari, Albers, Ruscha\u200a\u2014\u200asubverted,\u201d The Los Angeles Times<\/em>, October 5, 2019, accessible online.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet this interpretation does not exclude also seeing in them a disenchanted reflection, given the deconsecration that their condition as commodities and museum objects entails. Although we may understand that artist and curator Barret Lybbert describes the wrapping as a \u201csarcophagus\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Barret Lybbert, \u201cTammi Campbell: As Long as It Lasts,\u201d exhibition text, Anat Ebgi, accessible online.<\/span> because of the implied high value of the protected work, we can also see the wrapping as a method of protection made necessary by the circulation of works in the art market and exhibitions. Furthermore, the bubble wrap evokes the work\u2019s auratic value while paradoxically revealing its compromising involvement in a material world interested in market transactions and symbolic capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This phenomenon is exemplified even more clearly by Campbell\u2019s Vir Heroicus Sublimis<\/em> (2018), dedicated to Barnett Newman\u2019s eponymous work (1950\u200a\u2013\u200a51). Here, the quintessential icon of an abstraction trying to be the most universal expression of tragic existence disappears beneath some trivial cardboard wrapping. Unlike the semitransparent plastic, the opaque cardboard conceals it from view while also indicating, almost derisively, the presence of the zips, as though silencing Newman\u2019s painting. The kraft-paper envelope in a way thematizes the work\u2019s status as an object<\/em> at the expense of the symbolic dimension that its painted configuration reveals. It suggests a work that has been metaphorically taken down from its pedestal and deconsecrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The various practices that I have examined here indicate different stances on abstraction: existing in dialogue with it, reinterpreting its legacy, or critically reconsidering it through canonical figures and works that serve as models or targets. Subject to a critical appropriation, an ironic trope, or a simultaneously imitative and original re-creation, \u201cabstraction\u201d (if not the practice, at least the idea of it) is deterritorialized by means of an abstract form that incorporates and de facto works on its own history, without minimal knowledge of which it is impossible to understand these works. This \u201cabstraction in quote marks\u201d no longer entails sweeping away the past but instead takes the form of looking back at history. Whereas the modern and teleological conception of historical time led to considering certain forms of abstraction as the endpoint of painting\u2019s unavoidable progression toward its \u201ctruth,\u201d these contemporary works instead appear to be endowed with volume or temporal depth. They are part of a different regime of historicity, in which their form is that of local developments that gain traction by looking back at the past. Rather than turning to the future, they contribute to an arboreal dilatation of the present, unfolding like an ever-growing rhizome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, abstract painting is heterogeneously reoriented toward issues extrinsic to the painting medium, such as identity or soci0-political considerations. As though extended or reinvented beyond itself, abstraction seems to be manifested in the prismatic depth of an embodied, situated, and dialogic experience\u200a\u2014\u200awith its own history and with the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Translated from the French by Oana Avasilichioaei <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A critic, independent curator, and associate professor in the department of art history at the Universit\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec \u00e0 Montr\u00e9al, Patrice Loubier is interested in furtive practices, words in art, and art in life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The plural form, \u201cabstractions,\u201d is significant; it immediately neutralizes the \u00admodern tendency to consider abstraction the \u201ctruest\u201d and most accomplished form of expression in painting due to its being supposedly faithful to the medium. Inherited from a linear and progress-oriented model of history, this idea no longer holds sway. Yet the term \u201cabstraction\u201d still drags it in its wake, as peremptory affirmations of this concept long marked its history, from the early manifestos up to the dogmatic positions of Clement Greenberg and Ad Reinhardt in the 1960s.<\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":268312,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[882],"tags":[],"numeros":[7491],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[958],"artistes":[7479,7481,1816],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[],"class_list":["post-268324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post","numeros-114-abstractions-en","auteurs-patrice-loubier-en","artistes-elaine-sturtevant-en","artistes-evelyn-taocheng-wang-en","artistes-tammi-campbell-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268324"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273671,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268324\/revisions\/273671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268324"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=268324"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=268324"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=268324"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=268324"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=268324"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=268324"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=268324"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=268324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Evelyn Taocheng Wang\u2019s Imitations<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n![\"Evelyn](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/114_DO_Loubier_Evelyn-Taocheng-Wang_MiniShanghaiPakchoiwithToothpickandImitationofAgnesMartin_2022-scaled.jpg\")
Mini Shanghai Pak choi with Toothpick and Imitation of Agnes Martin<\/em>, 185 \u00d7 185 cm, 2022.
Photo: \u00a9 Evelyn Taocheng Wang 2025, courtesy of the artist & Antenna Space, Shanghai ; Carlos\/Ishikawa, London ; Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam & Kayokoyuki, Tokyo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Evelyn](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/114_DO_Loubier_Evelyn-Taocheng-Wang_MakeupRemoverCottonPadsandImitationofAgnesMartin_2023-scaled.jpg\")
Makeup Remover Cotton Pads and Imitation of Agnes Martin<\/em>, 185 \u00d7 185 cm, 2023.
Photo: \u00a9 Evelyn Taocheng Wang 2025, courtesy of the artist & Antenna Space, Shanghai ; Carlos\/Ishikawa, London ; Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam & Kayokoyuki, Tokyo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
The presence of the text recalls the important role of writing and poetry in ancient Chinese painting, especially that of the Song and Ming dynasties (between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries), with which Wang is clearly familiar. The allusion to a painting tradition from her country of origin, which she decontextualizes by incorporating it into her contemporary art practice and combining it with her replicas of a Canadian-American artist\u2019s works, in turn transforms these works: the specificity of Martin\u2019s modernist abstraction is hybridized with an art practice in which painting and poetry can coexist. Despite first appearing as incongruous presences, the thoughts and anecdotes that Wang transcribes and illustrates on her canvases can be considered snapshots attesting both to her dialogue with Martin\u2019s paintings and to the encounter between two artistic and cultural traditions that her approach as a contemporary artist allows her to orchestrate in her own work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Evelyn](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/114_DO_Loubier_Evelyn-Taocheng-Wang_SugarPowderBambooandImitationofAgnesMartin_2023-scaled.jpg\")
Sugar Powder Bomboo and Imitation of Agnes Martin<\/em>, 185 \u00d7 185 cm, 2023.
Photo: \u00a9 Evelyn Taocheng Wang 2025, courtesy of the artist & Antenna Space, Shanghai ; Carlos\/Ishikawa, London ; Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam & Kayokoyuki, Tokyo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nTammi Campbell\u2019s Trompe-l\u2019oeil<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The crucial role of the actual process of making a copy is also underscored by Tammi Campbell, another artist who has devoted a number of works to Martin. In an illuminating essay, art critic and independent curator Nancy Tousley evokes Campbell\u2019s words to show how the labour of re-creating represents a valuable experience for her: \u201c\u2018The idea of remaking in my work is to understand [the work],\u2019 Campbell says, mirroring the stance of a student copier.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Nancy Tousley, \u201cIs What You See Really What You See? Tammi Campbell\u2019s Dialogue with Modernism,\u201d Canadian Art<\/em>, March 20, 2014, accessible online.<\/span> Remaking is not just a technical step for the sole purpose of producing a duplicate, but also important in itself for the knowledge it brings to the artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Tammi](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/114_DO_Loubier_Tammi-Campbell_HomagetotheSquaredetail_2022_18-scaled.jpg\")
Homage to the Square with Bubble Wrap and Packing Tape<\/em> (detail),
63,5 \u00d7 63,5 cm, 2022.
Photo: Paul Litherland, courtesy of the artist & Blouin Division, Montr\u00e9al & Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/114_DO_Loubier_Tammi-Campbell_HomagetotheSquare_2022_18-cut-scaled.jpg\")
Homage to the Square with Bubble Wrap and Packing Tape<\/em>,
63,5 \u00d7 63,5 cm, 2022.
Photo: Paul Litherland, courtesy of the artist & Blouin Division, Montr\u00e9al & Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/114_DO_Loubier_Tammi-Campbell_HomagetotheSquare_2022_56-cut-scaled.jpg\")
Homage to the Square with Bubble Wrap and Packing Tape<\/em>,
63,5 \u00d7 63,5 cm, 2022.
Photo: Paul Litherland, courtesy of the artist & Blouin Division, Montr\u00e9al & Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n