owen fox looking outwards 2

François Morellet
Random Distribution of 40,000 Squares Using the Odd and Even Numbers of a Telephone Directory
1960

I like this painting because it’s so abstract, it suggests shapes and textures when you first look at it, and then when you look at it again completely different shapes and textures appear.

Morellet created this work with a simple physical algorithm. He divided the canvas into a giant grid, and colored the squares on the grid red or blue based on the numbers his wife read to him aloud from a phone book. This work captures Morellet’s interest in the iterative, and the random, and especially his interest in combining scientific/numerical processes with art.