ARTICLE 4 — EXPLORING ABSTRACTION
Monochrome, Repetition, Emptiness, Light and Space
A study by Marie Dernoncourt — 2026
After the intensity of gesture and the thickness of material, some artists took the opposite direction. They no longer sought to add, but to reduce. A single colour, a repeated form, an almost empty surface or a light could entirely transform space. Removing no longer meant impoverishing: each difference became rarer, and therefore more decisive.
Reducing Without Impoverishing
From the late 1950s onwards, several radical approaches emerged in Europe and the United States. They did not constitute a single movement. Yves Klein’s monochromes, Ad Reinhardt’s black paintings, Agnes Martin’s grids, Donald Judd’s series and Dan Flavin’s light pursued neither the same aims nor the same experiences. Yet they shared one question: what remains when a work renounces the multiplication of signs?
The answer is not “almost nothing”. On the contrary, what remains becomes more exposed: a nuance, a boundary, a rhythm, an interval, the distance between the work and the wall, the time required by the gaze. Yet reduction does not guarantee depth. An empty surface may remain empty; a simple form may become a device. Less is not automatically more. Everything depends on the necessity of the relationships the work makes perceptible.
The Monochrome: A Colour Becomes a World
At first, the monochrome seems to eliminate almost every decision involved in painting. A single colour occupies the surface. Yet this apparent unity shifts attention towards what figurative imagery sometimes concealed: the density of pigment, mattness, gloss, edge, format, ambient light and viewing time.
In Ad Reinhardt’s late paintings, the surface appears black at first glance. By remaining before them, a grid structure and subtle chromatic differences gradually begin to emerge. The work does not reveal its organisation immediately; it requires the eye to slow down and adjust. Black is not a uniform block, but a threshold of perception.
Yves Klein chose a different intensity. His blue monochromes do not seek erasure, but immersion. The ultramarine pigment, whose brilliance is preserved by a particular binder, absorbs the gaze and seems to detach the surface from the wall. Colour no longer clothes a form: it becomes the principal event. Yet not all monochromes should be confused. Reinhardt’s restrained black and Klein’s expansive blue produce almost opposite experiences.
Piero Manzoni even removed the idea of colour in his Achromes. Canvases impregnated with kaolin, followed by other white or colourless materials, transform according to their texture and their own weight. Robert Ryman, for his part, used white as a means of making the support, the thickness of the paint, the brushwork, the fixings and the light more visible. These are not simply “white paintings”: they are investigations into the material conditions of painting.
Repetition: Revealing the Infinitesimal
Reducing can also mean repeating. When the same line, point, module or gesture returns, the composition is no longer organised around a spectacular centre. The gaze circulates. It compares. It discovers that nothing is ever repeated in quite the same way.
Agnes Martin drew measured lines and grids on pale grounds, often crossed by very delicate colours. Her work has frequently been associated with Minimalism because of its austere geometry, but her intention cannot be reduced to industrial impersonality. The lines remain fragile, sometimes trembling; regularity makes room for air, light and human variation.
In Yayoi Kusama’s work, networks, dots and accumulations overflow the isolated form. Repetition suggests a potentially infinite extension and may invade the canvas, the object or the entire room. It is not necessarily soothing: it can absorb as much as disorientate. In Roman Opalka’s work, from 1965 onwards, the succession of numbers became the programme of a lifetime. Each canvas continued the previous one, while the ground gradually grew lighter. Here repetition makes time visible, not through an image of time, but through the actual duration of the work.
The Series Replaces the Heroic Gesture
In the Minimal art of the 1960s, repetition often took a serial form. Donald Judd organised simple volumes in real space; Sol LeWitt developed structures from rules and permutations. The artist’s hand was no longer necessarily the visible centre of the work. The choice of module, measure, material and interval became decisive.
This reduction does not make the work neutral. Two identical volumes do not produce the same effect according to their distance, height or the way light reaches them. The emptiness between the elements is no longer a remainder: it fully belongs to the construction. Space ceases to be merely the place where the object is set; it becomes one of its materials.
Emptiness: A Presence Rather Than an Absence
In the previous article, Lucio Fontana opened the canvas to create a passage for real space. Yves Klein crossed another threshold in 1958 when he emptied the Iris Clert Gallery of every painting, sculpture and object. The space appeared empty, yet it had been prepared, painted, framed by an entrance ritual and offered to attention. What was exhibited was no longer a thing: it was the very situation of the encounter.
Artistic emptiness is therefore never pure nothingness. It has dimensions, boundaries, a temperature, acoustics and light. It also depends on a body moving through it. By removing the object, the artist does not abolish the experience; he shifts its source. The viewer begins to perceive what usually remained in the background.
Light Becomes Material
With Dan Flavin, from 1963 onwards, industrially produced fluorescent tubes composed the work. Their coloured light does not stop at the glass: it reaches the wall, floor, corners and the visitor’s body. A very simple material structure thus transforms a volume far greater than itself. The work is both the visible apparatus and the atmosphere it produces.
James Turrell took this shift further. In his early projections of the late 1960s, light could appear to form a solid volume or open a depth within a wall. What we believe we see and what materially exists no longer coincide. The work does not represent perception: it places the visitor inside their own perceptual mechanisms.
Light then reveals a simple truth: seeing is never the passive reception of an image. The eye adjusts, the body locates itself, duration alters colours and distances. Space becomes active because the viewer experiences it.
When Almost Everything Is Removed
The monochrome, repetition, emptiness and light are not four ways of doing less. They are four means of shifting the decision. A single colour makes nuance decisive. Repetition reveals difference. Emptiness gives weight to distance. Light transforms space without cluttering it.
This history also requires us to distinguish reduction from minimalist style. A work may be extremely spare yet remain agitated; it may be geometric and seek emotion; it may employ white without aspiring to purity. Categories help to situate artistic enquiries, but they must not replace observation.
Removing to Breathe
In Marie Dernoncourt’s practice, “removing to breathe” denotes neither an imitation of Minimalism nor a rejection of material. It is a rule of vigilance: removing what repeats unnecessarily, what closes meaning too quickly or what prevents space from acting. White may remain material; the cube may retain its weight; a line may hold the surface in tension. But each element must leave the others the possibility of existing.
Removing then becomes an act of construction. It does not consist in embellishing silence or artificially manufacturing emptiness. It seeks the point at which the work ceases to speak too loudly without becoming mute. That point is never given in advance. It is discovered by observing what still holds when the incidental disappears.
What Reduction Makes Visible
From monochromes to luminous environments, the same transformation takes place: the work no longer concentrates all its force in an image to be recognised. It distributes that force between surface, material, interval, architecture, time and the viewer.
When almost everything is removed, the slightest variation begins to speak. A trace becomes a decision. An interval becomes a tension. A light becomes material. Emptiness becomes presence. Reduction is therefore not the end of abstract language; it heightens its demands.
To be continued — When the painting is no longer enough, abstraction expands into installation, architecture, landscape and the viewer’s body. The next article will explore the moment when the work no longer merely stands before us, but becomes an environment to move through.
References and Sources
- Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) — Ad Reinhardt, Abstract Painting (1963) and presentation of his black paintings: grid structure, chromatic nuances and the eye’s gradual adaptation.
- Centre Pompidou — Yves Klein, IKB 3, Monochrome bleu (1960) and archives of the exhibition known as The Void (1958): monochrome, immateriality and apparently empty space.
- Pinault Collection — Piero Manzoni, Achrome : kaolin, colourless materials and the exploration of a surface freed from colour and allusion.
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) — Robert Ryman: the use of white as a means of making the support, paint, brushwork and material conditions of the work visible.
- National Gallery of Art — Agnes Martin: measured grids, delicate lines, atmospheric colours and the distinction between a Minimalist association and the artist’s own aims.
- Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) — Yayoi Kusama, Accumulation of Nets et Minimalism : repetition, series, modules, materials and the construction of real space.
- Centre Pompidou — Roman Opalka, OPALKA 1965/1–∞ : the succession of numbers, the gradual lightening of the grounds and the inscription of duration within a work pursued throughout a lifetime.
- Dia Art Foundation — Dan Flavin, Light, Color, and Space : industrial fluorescent tubes, serial configurations and the perceptual transformation of architecture.
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum — James Turrell: investigations into perception, light, colour, space and the early light projections of the late 1960s.
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