Fifteen Plate Piece
Artist
Jennifer Bartlett
(American, 1941 - 2022)
Date1973
MediumEnamel over silkscreen grid on baked enamel, steel plates
DimensionsOverall: 64 × 38 inches (162.56 × 96.52 cm)
Each (15 total): 12 × 12 inches (30.48 × 30.48 cm)
Each (15 total): 12 × 12 inches (30.48 × 30.48 cm)
Credit LinePurchase: acquired through the generosity of the William T. Kemper Foundation–Commerce Bank, Trustee
Object number2005.25.A-O
Signedverso, plate 15 (O): "J. Bartlett/ 73"
On View
Not on viewCollections
DescriptionAbstract linear patterns running horizontally, vertically, and along diagonals, are distributed over fifteen square metal plates that are printed to resemble graph paper. The ground of the plate is light in color, with the linear motifs in black and small points of red.Exhibition HistoryCleveland Collects Modern Art, Cleveland
Museum of Art, September-October 1980, no cat.
Jennifer Bartlett's Fifteen Plate Piece is an example of her early interest in Minimalist and Conceptual art practice. Bartlett used one-foot-square steel plates and Testors quick-drying and easy-to-apply hobby store paint. Rather than mixing colors, she used color directly, limiting her palette to red, yellow and blue, as well as green, black and white.
Bartlett's approach to Fifteen Plate Piece was methodical. She began with steel plates commercially coated with baked-on white enamel and overprinted with a silkscreened grid of lines. Within the grid, she painted tiny dots to create horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines, which created intersections. Using the grid of lines as her guide, Bartlett laboriously applied the enamel within the small squares as she explored the rationality of structural systems.
Bartlett's approach to Fifteen Plate Piece was methodical. She began with steel plates commercially coated with baked-on white enamel and overprinted with a silkscreened grid of lines. Within the grid, she painted tiny dots to create horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines, which created intersections. Using the grid of lines as her guide, Bartlett laboriously applied the enamel within the small squares as she explored the rationality of structural systems.
With Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, by 2005;
Purchased from Paula Cooper Gallery by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas
City, MO, 2005.
Jan Schall and Robert Storr, Sparks! The William T. Kemper Collecting Initiative (Kansas City: The Nelson-
Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 64, 65, (repro.).
Copyright© Jennifer Bartlett
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