sin over black matter, 2019: a reading in seven lenses
Acrylic on canvas, 65 × 90 cm (25 ⅝ × 35 ⅜ in). Painting by Yiğit Özen.
At a Glance
The right two-thirds has turned into nothing, not even a ground, a halted darkness; the figure is at least twice as small as this void, the single light mass squeezed against the left edge. The body is folded in two, the back making an arch above and ending where the head should be in a lumpy tip, no face set upon it. Setting yellow over black is hard work; acrylic yellow covers poorly, so on the back and thigh it is beaten by the black beneath and falls to an olive tone. The outer line of the hip and the front of the calf are far brighter, because those places were returned to a second and third time, the paint has built up; the figure's seemingly lit edge is in fact its thickest place. There is no cast shadow, the figure sits not upon the black but within it, burning of its own accord.
At the centre of the body, in the gap between arm and chest, stands a sharp-edged red triangle. A single layer, filled in one pass, no brushmark discernible within it, and nowhere else on the surface is there anything of this saturation; the eye is nailed to it. Whether it is a wound or the inner tissue of an opened body, the painting does not settle. When the title points to sin the triangle turns into a seal, the mark left on the body by what has been committed. But the same body is read another way too. This is a body whose face is not asked after, of which only what it can do is known; crouched, as if about to pick something from the ground, or not yet risen from having picked it up. To ascribe sin to a wearied body is an old habit, whereas the sole of the foot is well spread to hold its balance.
That red is the one gap still open in a body trying to close itself; the effort to hide points to what is hidden. Hand and foot do the same work, the fingers spread on the ground, the body having given up standing upright and drawn near to the four-legged. Within the series this body is unusually whole; while in other works of the same year the body scatters into bubbles, here arm parts from arm, calf from calf, the muscles turned round with the brush. It is as if the artist wished to show that, before passing to the cell method, he could draw the classic body. To abandon the figure to a placeless darkness recalls Ribera's saints, but there a world lay behind the darkness, here there is none. From two steps back the void on the right closes wholly into black; a step nearer, erasure marks and old brush movements appear. That is the region the eye must cross to see the figure, and there is nothing there to hold on to.
Form and Composition
In the horizontal format the single light mass leans against the left third, while the twice-as-large void on the right tips the painting to the right with a weightless pull. As the silhouette's outer line holds up and the inner texture collapses to the value of the ground, the straight-edged triangle seated on the chest rises as the single sharp focus in the middle of all the curves.
A single light mass leans against the left edge, while everywhere else is dark. The field lies crosswise here, and the figure enters only the left third of this width. The two sections on the right are wholly empty; there are only the horizontal drag marks the brush has left and a faint opening at the right mid-height. The amount of the void is at least twice the area of the figure. This ratio produces a weightlessness that pulls the painting to the right, and the figure, with its own weight, presses against the left edge.
The body is bent. The back makes an arch at the top, its apex at the intersection of a third from the left and a third from the top. From there the line descends to the right and rolls over, ending in a lumpy tip where the head ought to be. This tip stands a little above the painting's horizontal mid-line and is the furthest projection to the right. Below the same line the leg breaks at the knee and descends; the break point is close to the very centre. The arm hangs from the left, the fingers open, its tip in the lower left quarter. A second extension descends to the very bottom, to foot level, and there it makes a horizontal spread.
The outside of the silhouette is hard. Inside, though, the brush marks loosen, the centre of the mass darkening almost to brown and approaching the same value as the ground. That is, the contour holds up while the inner texture collapses. The distinction blurs most in the head region; there the edge of the light mass disperses into a soft halo and seeps into the dark area. That region alone has let go of its boundary.
Within the mass there is a single sharp unit: a flat triangular area seated in the hollow of the chest. Its edges are straight, its paint a single layer, with no texture at all. Its scale is small, but because of the jump in value it is the focus of the whole painting. Its position is about a quarter from the left, a third from the top. The apex of the triangle points up, its base horizontal. Because everything around it is curved, those straight edges look foreign.
In the upper left corner the value of the ground changes. An area about the size of a rectangle is a little lighter than its neighbour and ends in a straight edge. This is the painting's second straight edge. The same thing repeats at the bottom edge, where below foot level there is a horizontal cut and the ground separates there like a second layer. The eye's route is short: it climbs onto the figure's back and drops to the triangle, descends down the leg and stands at the foot, then comes back without finding any resting place in the void on the right. There is no line at all going to the right edge. The only force spilling outside the mass is the spread of the halo at the head to the right. Apart from that, all the movement curls in on itself; back, arm and leg together try to build a closed circle, but the circle stays open in the lower left corner. The gap between the figure and the top edge is wide, about a fifth of the height empty from the top. The gap with the left edge, meanwhile, is narrow, about a finger's width. These two differences of distance make the mass look not as if it is jammed into the corner but as if it has slid inward from the edge.
Colour and Light
The black of the ground is not all of one piece, sliding into green, brown and blue; the figure rises out of this darkness in a yellow that descends from lemon to tobacco brown. While the single red triangle on the hip binds the figure to itself with its unlightened saturation, as the colour of the black behind changes the edge of the yellow melts on one side and is cut like a razor on the other.
The black here is not all of one piece. At the upper right it verges on green, almost an olive black; in the middle band it slides to brown; along the left edge it drops a little towards blue and cools. Where the brush has rubbed dry the layer beneath shows through like a ghost, vertical and horizontal marks remaining. At the upper left corner a quadrangular area stands half a register lighter than its surroundings, as though a separate black had been laid there and its edge left untidied. The ground, then, is broad, but not flat. The figure emerges from within this darkness in yellow. The yellow itself is not a single tone: along the line of the back there is a light yellow close to lemon, in the middle of the hip and the leg it descends to earth yellow, and from there to tobacco brown. The browns do not look like a pre-mixed blend, they seem to have come about by the yellow being dirtied on the canvas; the brush turned within the same dough and the colour thickened right there. The lightest places are the upper edge of the hip and the back of the shoulder; there white has got into the yellow.
The only red is the triangular wedge at the upper part of the hip. An unmixed, unlightened, opaque red. Its edge is as clean as if cut with a knife; it has not mixed with the yellow around it, and its edge has not been softened either. On the rest of the surface there is nothing at this saturation, and so the eye is nailed there and the rest of the figure reads as though ranged around the red. Its area is perhaps two per cent of the painting. It leaves the impression that the light comes from within the figure. Where the head and shoulder meet the black there is a pale yellowish halo, the paint thinned there and drawn outwards; like a warmth seeping into the darkness. But there is no cast shadow at all. Beneath the feet the ground does not behave like a floor, the figure sits not on the black but inside it. The darkness is not a space, but a void.
The value range is one of the widest openings the series can show; almost all the steps from ink black to cream yellow are present together. The distribution of warm and cool is so unequal, too, that three quarters of the surface is neutral darkness and the rest a burning colour. This proportion makes the yellow look brighter than it is. The region of the ground that escapes into green makes this easier still, because the green behaves not as the neighbour of the yellow but as its opposite and pushes it away. The same yellow dims a little in the middle band where the black turns to brown. The boundary between the lower part of the leg and the ground grows indistinct there, and because the two colours approach the same warmth the edge line disappears. On the side of the back the situation reverses; the cool darkness cuts the yellow and leaves its edge like a razor. The two sides of the same figure end in two different degrees of hardness, according to the colour of the black behind it.
Near the lower edge, just to the right of the foot, there is a slanting mark left a little lighter within the black. The paint there has been wiped away or left wanting, and it cuts off before touching the yellow.
Iconography, Myth and Title
The body left between prostration and all fours carries the old motif of the punished turning into an animal, and the bending becomes a load rather than respect. The red triangle on the chest stands like a seal of the thing committed pressed onto the body, and moreover, in the scene that makes the punishment visible there is neither judge nor witness.
A yellow body emerges out of the black and bends forward. The head hangs down, the face is not visible; instead of a neck there is a thick mass, and the end of that mass finishes in a lump. The arms reach to the ground, the fingers spread, and the feet too are splayed across the ground with open toes. In the middle of the body a red triangle opens, and among the single-coloured patches the sharpest mark is there.
The counterpart of this stance is very old. Prostration, kneeling, bowing the neck; all are set up by the body tucking its head beneath the torso. But there is something odd here, because the figure is neither quite collapsing nor quite standing. It is in a position close to standing on all fours; it has been left on the threshold between human and animal. In the tales the transformation of the punished human into an animal, or being condemned to walk like an animal, is a frequent motif. Here the bending stands more like a state of carrying a load than of respect. The inscribing of the punishment onto the body is the oldest visual form of legal narratives; the crime stays invisible, its recompense is made visible.
The red triangle does a great deal on its own. It can be read as a wound, because it stands in that gap between the armpit and the chest. It can also be read as an internal organ, like the place where the body opens and its inside becomes visible. When the title points to sin, this triangle becomes a seal; the mark that the thing committed has left on the body. A seal is pressed onto what should not be opened. In medieval painting, showing sin with red and punishment with darkness is a familiar device. Here the two are side by side and there is no intermediary figure between them. There is neither judge nor witness.
The ground itself is also part of the narrative. Everywhere outside the figure is dark and of uncertain depth; even the place where the feet press is not quite counted as ground, only the place where the body ends. In creation narratives the first body is mostly drawn out of darkness or earth and its first movement is to straighten up. The figure here does not straighten. It has either not yet risen or has given up rising. A body that does not straighten says that the narrative has not yet begun or has already ended. Because the source of light is not visible, the brightness seems to come from the body itself; and this makes it the only mark burning in a darkened field.
The scene is not a rite, because there is neither altar nor crowd. Nor is it a portrait, because the face has been deliberately hidden. What remains looks like the moment a punishment is under way, or the silence just after the punishment. In the upper left corner there is a lighter rectangular area; it stands like a pale light striking the wall, perhaps the remnant of a closed-off window. The figure does not look at it. Its head is constantly down, and as the hands approach the ground the fingers separate from one another, as if searching for something to hold onto. The dark traces at the tips of the fingers vanish where they touch the ground.
Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious
The body that hides its face beneath itself and turns into a ball takes on the form of shame, but the red gap under the arm refuses to close and makes the hidden visible. The hand and foot touching the ground bring the body closer to something four-legged, proposing a solution that gives up standing upright and draws near the soil.
A body folded in two is pressed into the left edge. Its head hangs down, and where the face ought to be only a round mass stands. There is no face. Or rather the face is hidden, tucked under the body. This is exactly the form the ashamed body takes; shrinking, closing, reducing the visible surface. The figure here is trying to fold itself into a ball but cannot manage it, the arms and legs stay outside.
Beneath the chest, the triangular gap that remains between the arm and the body has been left red. That is the painting's only sharp place. In a body trying to close, it is the one gap still left open. The inside becomes visible there. Whether it is a wound, or inner tissue seeping from between the folding body, I cannot say for certain; it could be either. What matters, to my mind, is this: however much the figure closes, it stays open somewhere, and the very thing it wants to hide becomes something that can be looked at through exactly that gap. The effort of hiding itself points to what is hidden. The edges of that red area are not sharp, they blur towards their surround. Even so, that same tone is nowhere else in the painting; it has gathered at a single point.
Below, a hand touches the ground. The fingers are spread, their tips as if in the soil. This hand supports the body, keeps it from falling. Beside it there is a foot, spread out as well. That the hand and the foot do the same work shows that the body has stopped being an upright human and moved closer to something four-legged. There is an old image to do with the feeling of guilt here; giving up standing upright, drawing close to the ground, turning into an animal. We can see this not as a humiliation but also as a solution. What is close to the ground falls less far. The tips of the fingers are slightly curled inward, as if searching for something to hold on to.
The broad darkness on the right covers almost the whole of the canvas. The figure does not spread into it, it has chosen to stay at the edge. Within the darkness there are faint traces, old brush movements, indistinct shadows. We cannot know whether anything is in that area, and this not-knowing is what sets up the real unease. Is there someone looking there? The figure closing itself off this much can be explained by the feeling of being looked at. But no one looking appears in the scene. The gaze may have come from within. In the upper right part of the darkness there is a slightly lighter area, which can also be read as the gap of a door. Whether anything comes from there, the painting does not say.
Where the light comes from is not clear. The figure seems to shine of its own accord; a body trying to hide in the darkness gives off light at the same time. That the thing wanting to hide should be the most visible thing is the painting's quiet contradiction. The small shadow beneath the foot is the only sign that reminds us the body really presses on a ground.
Society, Power and Technology
The body given no face but whose fingers can be counted one by one shows what the market wants from a worker: let the back bend, let the face not be asked after. The crouching posture and the red gash on the chest carry the loss of lower back and knee that is written into no contract, while the dark area carries the night labour that the city wipes away.
The hands and feet are drawn one by one, the fingers can be counted. There is no head. Where the neck should end there is a round mass, no face has been placed there. Before us stands a body whose owner is not apparent but whose capacities are very apparent. What the market wants from a person is exactly this: let the fingers work, let the back bend, let no one ask about the face. How many people know the name of the boy who leaves the parcel at the door, who sees the face of the person scanning shelves in the warehouse until morning.
The posture is a crouching posture. As though about to pick something up off the ground, or as though not having straightened up from picking it up. I know bodies that stay in this position a long time, you see them in the field, in the workshop, at the back of the market lorry. You bend once, you stand up; you bend a thousand times a day, and after a while something does not come back when you stand. The relation between the length of the bending and the wage paid is written into no contract. The contract states the hours, it does not state what the body has actually lost. The measure of the thing called productivity is always held from the same side too; how many boxes, how many minutes, how many orders. There is no column for how many lower backs, how many knees, how many shoulders in that table.
Where the chest is a red area has opened, the only piece with a sharp edge. It looks like a wound. Somewhere inside something opened and, seen from outside, only a small gap is visible. Workplace-accident statistics are like this too, they are heard as a number, the man inside the number is not heard. Something that happens on one shift meets you years later in another hospital under another diagnosis, and no one draws a link between the two. To draw one you would have to keep records, and keeping records suits no one.
The whole area to the figure's right is dark. I would not call that emptiness, I would call it the unseen hours of work. After the city's lights go out a great many people stay on their feet; the baker, the security guard, the cleaner, the night watchman. Daytime life is built upon them but they are not visible by day. The darkness here is not a set decoration, it is the name of a shift. No one ever talks about who it was that wiped down the corridor that those coming into the office in the morning find spotless, for instance. That corridor greets you as though it had cleaned itself. This is the city's greatest trick, I suppose, the wiping away of labour's trace. And when no trace is left, no gratitude is left either, and no ground is left on which to bargain over a wage.
In the title the word sin appears and this troubles me, because pinning sin on a worn-out body is an old habit. When poverty is counted a moral failing, the obligation to care for the poor is also done away with. You say lazy, you move on. You say incompetent, you move on. And yet in the picture there is no sign whatever of laziness; on the contrary, the sole of the foot is spread wide on the ground, the toes splayed to hold the balance.
Art History and Comparison
In Ribera's tenebrist saints the darkness is a stage-blackout, behind which a world still stands; in this canvas the void behind has not even turned into a ground. Whereas Güleryüz gives the viewer the face of his bent figure, here the head is hidden between the shoulders and the body has been drawn with a wholeness rarely seen within the series.
A crouched body, its head buried between its knees, stands alone at the left edge; the fingers of the hand touch the ground, and so do the toes. The rest is a dark void. To leave a figure alone within a placeless darkness is an old solution in the history of painting. As with Ribera's saints, in the Baroque tenebrist tradition the figure is torn out of the darkness, because everything around it has been thrown outside the narrative; there the darkness is a stage-blackout, and behind it there is still a world. Here there is no world behind. The right two-thirds of the surface has turned into nothing, not even a ground, it has simply stayed there.
This figure's body is unusually whole within the series. In many works of the same year, 2019, the body is built up by the accumulation of small bubbles and most often did not amount to a complete human. Here, however, arm is distinguished from arm, calf from calf, the muscle volumes are turned with the brush, even the transition between the wrist and the fingers has been thought through. That is, it is as though the artist showed himself, before passing to the cell method, that he could draw the classical body. In the series' later years this wholeness will break apart; in the crowded canvases of 2020 a single-piece anatomy like this will not again appear with this clarity.
The main matter twentieth-century figurative painting inherited is open here too: can a figure exist without belonging to a place. In post-war British painting this question was usually answered by building a cage, a room, a platform around the figure, on the thought that the figure's solitude cannot be measured without the measure of the void being given. In this canvas that help too has been cut off. The only support is the body's fingers pressing on the ground. In Mehmet Güleryüz's bent figures, closed in on themselves, there is a similar solitude; but Güleryüz gives us the figure's face, puts the expression on display. Here there is no face at all, the head is hidden between the shoulders, no place has been left to carry an expression.
In the middle of the body stands a sharp-edged patch, close to a triangle. Although the rest of the paint spreads and thins along the body, this patch is flat, closed, as though laid down in a single go. It could be a wound, or a covering; the word sin in the title tries to turn it into a sign, but the painting does not make that sign definite. The headless body had become a symbol in interwar French thought; the human figure that has lost its head was there within a conscious programme. The headlessness here stands without a programme, as though it came about because the hand, drawing the body downward, stopped before it reached the head. On the right side of the dark area there are pale patches left under the paint; something was done and then covered over, and that layer appears only when one looks at an angle.
Material, Gesture and the Viewer's Experience
When the yellow could not cover over the black ground it fell to olive, and the edge of the figure that looks lit is in fact its thickest place, returned to three times with paint built up. The black void on the right may come out like a flat surface on the screen, but on the wall it fills with the wiping marks where the hand roamed and pulls to itself the eye that wants to see the figure.
Getting yellow to sit over black is no easy matter; acrylic yellow is a paint of weak covering power and cannot lift the dark beneath it. And this is exactly what happens here. On the figure's back and thigh the yellow has been beaten by the black beneath it and turned to an olive colour. I read this not as a colour decision but as the resistance of the material. At the edges, that is on the outer line of the hip and the front line of the calf, the yellow is far brighter; there it was returned to a second, even a third time, the paint built up and finally covered the black beneath. So the edge of the figure that looks lit is in fact its thickest place.
The source of that cream ring around the head and shoulder is the same physics. There white has been added to the yellow, the mixture has thickened, the brush has been pressed as it laid it down and the black is covered completely. That region stands a few times thicker than the others; from the side I think you would feel it lift from the surface. The red triangle on the hip, meanwhile, is placed with an altogether different logic, flat and filled in in a single go, and I cannot make out a single brush mark within it. For red to be able to stand this smooth it must either be laid on very densely or have a covering layer beneath it.
The fingers and feet are flung down with a fine-tipped brush, each in a single whip movement. The five fingers were left in five separate pulls; there is no correction at any of their tips, two of them ride over each other and stayed so. At the place of the wrist the paint ran out, the line is cut off in the middle. This cut is not mended. Looking at the cream patch beneath the sole of the foot, I see that the brush was lifted from there by being pushed, leaving its bristles splayed. On the inner side of the leg, a wet dark tone was drawn over the wet yellow; the two have not fully fused, a muddy intermediate band left between them. No one makes that band on purpose, it is the paint's own decision.
The remaining three quarters of the surface is black, but not a uniform black. On the right side there are the marks of a broad brush dragged crosswise, and in some places, because the paint has thinned, the brownish tone beneath seeps through. On the top edge there are short vertical nicks left during drying. In the upper left corner there is a different quadrilateral; the black there is more matt and flatter than the other, it looks as if it was covered in a separate go.
A sixty-five by ninety canvas; looked at from two paces back, the void on the right becomes wholly black and the figure hangs alone within the darkness. Come a step closer and that void begins to fill, wiping marks come out. On a screen this second state disappears completely; the screen gives the black as a flat surface, whereas there the area the hand roamed over is plain as day. Hanging on the wall, that void pulls the viewer to its side, because it is the area the eye must cross to see the figure and there is nothing to hold on to there.
Back to sin over black matter
