The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 22, 2024

Soft Borders

1997

Mark Tansey

(American, 1949-)

America, 20th century

oil on canvas

Framed: 269.1 x 217.2 x 5.8 cm (105 15/16 x 85 1/2 x 2 5/16 in.); Unframed: 265.7 x 214 cm (104 5/8 x 84 1/4 in.)

Dorothea Wright Hamilton Fund 1997.152

Location: not on view

Description

With wit and irony, this painting reveals Mark Tansey’s fascination with the nature of time, space, and painting itself. Against a mountain backdrop he painted four interrelated scenes: a small tribe of native Americans, an expedition of 19th-century surveyors and photographers, a group of tourists taking photographs and home movies, and a toxic waste-removal crew in protective clothing. Each scene is depicted from a different perspective. Shown here in the orientation preferred by the artist, the canvas can be hung in any of four positions. Tansey describes Soft Borders as a “short history of the West from four different points of view.” The artist makes many preliminary drawings and collages before producing a final composition. Once the planning is finished, the time actually spent painting is brief—several days to several months. Tansey’s palette is restricted to one color applied over a gessoed (plastered) canvas, manipulating the paint with brushes and scraping tools, removing pigment until the white of the ground is visible, much like daylight shining through fog.

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Cleveland Museum of Art, “Major African Sculpture, Recent Mark Tansey Painting, and Other Works of Art Enter CMA Collection,” September 16, 1997, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. archive.org
Hinson, Tom E., "Mark Tansey", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 38 no. 03, March 1998 Mentioned & reproduced: p. 4-5 archive.org
Once Upon a Time... The Western: A New Frontier in Art and Film. Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (organizer) (October 14, 2017-February 4, 2018).
Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, Québec,Canada (10/14/2017 – 2/4/2018): "Once Upon a Time... The Western: A New Frontier in Art and Film"
{{cite web|title=Soft Borders|url=false|author=Mark Tansey|year=1997|access-date=22 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1997.152