
Brickwall Piece (Primary Title)
Loren Madsen, American, born 1943 (Artist)
I want these things to be dumb, quick, and simple. . . . It’s all out front for everybody to see. —Davi Det Hompson Hompson is best known for his artists books and Mail art—forms that reflect his participation in Fluxus. An international movement of artists working in a wide range of media during the 1960s and ’70s, Fluxus was known for its playful irreverence, which stemmed partly from the early 20th-century Dada movement. (Hompsons’ play with language extends to the reconfiguration ofhis given name, David E. Thompson.) In the late 1980s, Hompson turned to painting: curved, boxlike slabs covered with pigmented wax whose central biomorphic shapes suggest totems on eccentric shields. Single-syllable titles echoing infants’ sounds connect the paintings to his prior language-based work, as does the sense of the image as an ephemeral thing, floating beneath a waxy skin and above a quirkily colored field, as if ready to slip away after the viewer’s brief pause before it,like turning the page in a book.
Gift of Best Products Co., Inc.
©artist or artist’s estate
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