GRISAILLE [Shades of Gray]

grisaille n. 1. A style of monochromatic painting in shades of gray, used especially for the representation of relief sculpture. 2. A painting in this style. 3a. Vitrifiable glass paint. b. A lacy pattern painted on light glass with vitrifiable paint and fired. [French, from gris, gray, from Old French, from Frankish, gris.] [from The American Heritage Dictionary]

GRISAILLE is a painting executed entirely in monochrome, in a series of greys. Strictly speaking, a monochrome painting is one executed in any one color, red, blue, or black: a grisaille, as its name implies, is in neutral greys only. A grisaille may be executed for its own sake as a decoration, or as a model for an engraver to work from, or it may be the first stage in building up an oil painting. [from the Penguin Dictionary of Art & Artists]

Are titles unnecessary appendages? When I say titles I also mean definitions, labels, explanations, even something someone once said. For instance, Marcel Duchamp once said that for a work of art a title should be like another color. Maybe so. It certainly seems when there is no title the viewer will supply one, unconsciously perhaps. A title can adhere tenaciously and will not be forcibly removed (The Night Watch?). Untitled (sans titre) is a title. So, do we give in to a habit? Marguerite Duras said, "it is speech that creates a text"; I contend that it is vision that creates an image. A title can be one of the many things from outside that informs vision. All too frequently, however, they block vision instead. Arguably, labels do away with vision. So, I give in not from habit, but I look for the right title, one that will require work (for me and the viewer). Grisaille is a piece, which aggressively resists definition or labeling in order to force engagement with the viewer/reader (one can choose to ignore it, of course–nothing can be done about that).

Each 'plate' is enamel over gouache on museum board. The boards are 10.5" X 14.25". Each image is 4" X 6.5". The gouache is flat, the enamel is gloss–both are applied with some surface incident in evidence [traces of the brush] albeit minimal. The grays are close in value, but different in hue. Depending on the viewer's angle and the light, the surfaces appear closer or further apart.

[light, surface, material, and temperature]

Gray is like noon -- it doesn't exist -- it's like Xeno's paradox.

Everything about Grisaille seems to follow orthodoxy–a boxed set of five works with a title, a colophon page, definitions and titles. One difference is that the titles are in five different languages.

1. der Morgen es graut
2. la grisette
3. su eminencia gris
4. a grey area
5. le Ceneri

Chances are that the viewer/reader will make their first contact in their own language. Further still, the titles are not immediately clear even in their respective languages, since they are figures of speech. They're not descriptive of the work as much as situations that reside in the space between the reader and the text, between the label and the object viewed, between the viewer and their own experience of gray. It is the space between image and meaning.

Also, each successive title adds to and alters the others in a chain that begins to resemble a narrative–at least, it appears to have a beginning a middle and an end. The order of the images follows suit, each informing the others.

Like it or not, the definition of Grisaille itself adds an historical dimension to the narrative, a 'before' (what colors do the grays stand for?) and an 'after' (are these studies? If so, for what?). And yet this is a distraction, if not a downright impediment. What is most unfortunate about labels and definitions is that they entirely close the necessary gap between things–and real meaning comes to an end. What is most important here is that gray does not mean any one thing. Nothing does. As Ludwig Wittgenstein noted about 'language games' – " . . . assimilating the descriptions of uses of words in this way cannot make the uses themselves any more like one another. For, as we can see, they are absolutely unlike." [P.I. 10.]