Marine Hugonnier
Art for Modern Architecture Herald Tribune, week Monday 29 November – Monday 6 December, 2004 (Homage to Ellsworth Kelly), 2005
Paper clips from Ellsworth Kelly’s book Line Form Color onto newspaper front pages; in seven parts
Each: 55.5 x 40.5 cm
'Art for Modern Architecture' is a series of collages (2004–ongoing) in which Hugonnier takes front pages from major newspapers and covers the images with silk screened, coloured paper in either red, yellow, green, magenta, cyan or black, the colours of the Kodak colours chart. The pages she chooses report on major historical events, for example the fall of the Berlin wall, the assassination of JFK or the turn of the millennium. She keeps the text intact, thereby investigating the role of the image, obscuring its documentary function.
In this instance, seven sequential front pages of the Herald Tribune haven been covered with cutouts taken from Ellsworth Kelly’s book Line Form Color, which comprises a series of studies in the form of drawings and collage. Known for his use of bright colour, Kelly was an American painter, printmaker and sculptor associated with Minimalism and color field painting. In collaging Kelly’s imagery over the top of the newspaper photos, Hugonnier is looking to recontextualise Kelly’s preoccupation with form and primary colours as a means to communicate ideas.
