ERASED CITY - Pictorial experiments : The blank canvas
The two images are the result of one of the five experiments of the 'Erased Michelanglo' series.
The image on the left is the 'Blank Canvas' used as a white ground for an abstracted copy of the 'The Virgin and Child with Saint John and Angels (‘The Manchester Madonna’) by Michelangelo in 1497.
The copy is made by painting colour fields and is unmade by covering up the layers of colour with white paint, leading to a process of double abstraction.
The image on the right shows the erased image fragment with scores, revealing the layers of paint below.
Similar to Robert Rauschenberg’s 'Erased de Kooning Drawing', the images helped to develop an understanding of the void as a tendency towards a nothingness while simultaneously suggesting the impossibility of removing all traces.
The ideas developed in the pictorial analysis titled 'Erased Michelangelo' are furthermore translated into an urban design strategy of erasure in 'Erased City : Revealing the lost River Walbrook in the Square Mile'.