John Torreano
T.V. Bulge, 1969
Acrylic on canvas
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection
Gift of Mary and Weston Naef in Memory of Frances Marie McNabola and William David McNabola
2019.02.001

This seminal painting was first shown at the 1969 Whitney Annual Exhibition in New York City, before being prominently displayed in the home of Weston J. and Mary Naef and eventually gifted to the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art.

T.V. Bulge exemplifies Torreano’s use of dots (and later gemstones) afloat in abstract grounds to construct the visual perception of spatial depth. If you focus on the dots and move to the other side of the painting, some of the dots will disappear from view. As your eye loses focus on the dots, your focus shifts to the painterly space behind, resulting in a figure-ground flip. This approach captures Torreano’s effort, across the years of his career and a variety of mediums, to create work that incorporates “viewer location as content” through a concept referred to as “movement-oriented perception.” In fact, Torreano’s work has been described by fellow artist, Richard Artschwager, “as paintings that stand still and makes YOU move.”

Item Description: A painting covered with horizontal streaks of green, brown, blue, and pink. Lines of small blue and black dots run across the image. Curved lines at either side of the painting suggest the bulging edges of a cathode-ray tube TV screen.