Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
OPALKA 1965/1 - ∞; Détail 4988006–5006015
Roman Opalka Polish (born France)
Not on view
In 1965, intent on visualizing the continuum of time, Opalka began to count to infinity. To do so, he chose a simple but strict regime of writing on canvases of uniform size using white on a dark background. Since he refilled his brush only when it had run out of paint, there is an irregular ebb and flow within each painting. At one million, Opalka started to add one percent of white paint to the background of each successive canvas, allowing for a relative chronological ordering of the works—the lighter the background color, the later in the project it was executed. The series consisted of 233 paintings at the artist’s death, and though each canvas may seem complete, it is but a detail in the overall project. Paradoxically, it was this necessary failure to fulfill the project that brought it to completion: Opalka saw the finality of his work in its unfinishedness.
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