Exact and Diminishing

1976

Not on view

Plimack Mangold’s practice emphasizes the Minimalist tenet of repetition and employs Conceptualism’s devices of marking and measuring, while remaining grounded in realist painting. Her choice of subject—domestic spaces such as floors, sometimes bare, sometimes with mirrors or piles of laundry—offers a personal counternarrative to the objective form of the grid, the dominant aesthetic concern of the time. In Exact and Diminishing she investigates a linoleum floor using studio tools. Two aluminum Exact brand rulers mark the space: one records the "exact" height of the canvas, while the other, rendered using one-point perspective, measures the same distance on the floor. The title plays with the deadpan characteristics of Conceptualism and also calls attention to the artifice of realist painting.

Artwork Details

Overview

Provenance

Exhibition History

References

Title: Exact and Diminishing
Artist: Sylvia Plimack Mangold (American, born New York, 1938)
Date: 1976
Medium: Acrylic and graphite on canvas with traces of red conté
Dimensions: 30 × 72 in. (76.2 × 182.9 cm)
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Purchase, Ruth and Seymour Klein Foundation Inc. and Charlotte Millman Gifts, 2012
Object Number: 2012.567
Rights and Reproduction: © Sylvia Plimack Mangold
Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

More Artwork

By Sylvia Plimack Mangold

From the same time and place

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Six Inches Four Ways, from the "Rubber Stamp Portfolio"

Multiple artists/makers

1976

The Pin Oak at the Pond, Sylvia Plimack Mangold American, Color drypoint, aquatint and spitbite on T.E.<br/>Edmond's Handmade hot-pressed paper — The Pin Oak at the Pond
Multiple artists/makers
1986

Maple Tree, Sylvia Plimack Mangold American, Etching and drypoint — Maple Tree
Sylvia Plimack Mangold
1998

Flexible and Stainless, Sylvia Plimack Mangold American, Color lithograph — Flexible and Stainless
Sylvia Plimack Mangold
1975

The Elm Tree, Sylvia Plimack Mangold American, Etching with aquatint — The Elm Tree
Sylvia Plimack Mangold
1993

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