Archive
The complete register
Twenty-four entries across eight arguments. Every row is one cause and what it did to the picture; the section pages carry the same entries with their standfirsts.
| Argument | Entry | Cause | Consequence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Materials | The collapsible tube | A screw-capped metal tube of ready-ground colour | Painting leaves the room, and a picture is sized to what one adult can carry |
| Materials | Chrome, cadmium, cobalt | Industrial pigments arriving within a few decades | A palette that had not existed a generation earlier, at full strength and in quantity |
| Materials | Grounds and primings | Canvas bought with its ground already applied | The key of the picture is set before the painter touches it |
| Outdoors | Painting on the spot | Working in front of the subject in a single sitting | Handling speeds up, because the light will not wait |
| Outdoors | The portable easel | A box that carries panels, tubes and a wet surface | A practical ceiling on how large an outdoor picture can be |
| Outdoors | Weather as a constraint | Wind, wet and cold as working conditions | The session, the support and the mark are all decided by the day |
| Jury & Shopfront | The Salon jury | A jury deciding admission, and then placement | A career made or ended by a wall — and rejection turned into its own event |
| Jury & Shopfront | The dealer system | Power moving from the jury to the shopfront | Stock, exclusivity, and the show given over to one artist |
| Jury & Shopfront | The good wall | Galleries hung from floor to cornice | Height becomes a verdict: on the line, or skied and unseen |
| After Likeness | Photography takes the job | A likeness that can be bought cheaply | Portrait painting has to argue for itself, and the pictures change |
| After Likeness | Colour theory arrives | Simultaneous contrast moving from the dye trade into the studio | Complementaries used as a working method rather than an effect |
| After Likeness | Flatness as a position | Insisting the picture is a surface, not a window | Depth and modelling become optional rather than assumed |
| The Readymade | What the claim was | Selecting an object rather than making one | The choice and its context are offered as the work |
| The Readymade | The lost originals | First objects discarded, later remade | Every claim about the originals now runs through a replica |
| The Readymade | Instructions as the work | A certificate and a specification as the object | Conservation becomes a question of intent rather than surface |
| Scale | Paint by the gallon | Commercial paint and unstretched canvas on the floor | A size that easel practice could not reach |
| Scale | Standing distance | A canvas sized to the wall | The body has to move back until the picture resolves |
| Scale | The room becomes the work | A piece that needs one specific room | The room is part of what is being made |
| Fabrication | Sent to the shop | An object ordered by drawing and specification | Authorship moves from the hand to the instruction |
| Fabrication | Editions and the plate | A plate or matrix that can repeat | Number, edition and cancellation replace the single object |
| Fabrication | Unstable materials | Latex, foam and cheap plastic | The work ages faster than the institution holding it |
| The Canon | How a list gets made | Surveys, syllabuses and acquisitions citing one another | A sequence that was assembled starts to look inevitable |
| The Canon | Who was outside the frame | A feedback loop that never reached certain practices | Systematic thinning rather than random omission |
| The Canon | Revision and rehang | A collection hung by theme rather than by date | The narrative of progress loses its spine |