Painting I / Context and the Conceptual Frame
Practice question · Multiple choice

A student hangs a single small painting in the centre of a six-metre white wall and is told the emptiness is part of the work. How does O'Doherty's account of the white cube support that reading?

Hints
  1. Ask what the white wall was designed to remove.
  2. Compare the same wall filled from dado to cornice in a salon hang.
Show the answer

D. The white wall is a construction, not neutral; emptiness asserts the art's value and isolation

Why

The white cube removes time, weather and the body in order to present objects as eternal, and empty wall is the most expensive thing in that room. Spending most of a wall on one object asserts its status before anyone looks. The same wall in a salon hang, filled to the cornice, asserted something quite different.

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