TY - JOUR T1 - From the Museum: the Art of Thinking. Part Twelve: Meta-thinking JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 326 LP - 327 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00450215 VL - 45 IS - 2 AU - Tom Kotsimbos Y1 - 2015/02/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/45/2/326.abstract N2 - Spatial Concept, “Waiting” is all simplicity that can't be trusted as it offers us both a revolutionary book-end to the art of the Renaissance that began in Florence some 500 years ago and a revelational breaking of new artistic ground. In one slashing gesture, Fontana dramatically overcame the illusionistic nature of painting and integrated real space and real voids into two-dimensional art. The medium now becomes the message in keeping with science, technology and art of the time as well as with his earlier plea for a new art (Manifiesto Blanco, 1946) that embraced modernity and movement. Spatial Concept, “Waiting” is one of a series of works Fontana made which featured a slashed canvas and are collectively known as the Tagli (‘cuts’). The physical opening of this picture's surface not only “discovered” the space behind the canvas, thereby blurring the distinction between two and three dimensionality, it also implied that a continuum existed between a viewer's space, the pictorial surface and what lay behind. Liberation from the Renaissance heritage of depth using the illusion of perspective is at hand. A general sense of mystery and depth is enhanced by careful attention to detail: canvas front is monochromatically painted (also ensures that the surface edges curl away backwards when slashed) and its reverse is lined with black gauze so that darkness shimmers behind the open cuts. ER -