Soft Borders

1997

Soft Borders, 1997. Mark Tansey (American, 1949-). 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.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dorothea Wright Hamilton Fund 1997.152 © Mark Tansey 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.