“I could do that” goes the refrain of philistines at mod­ern art gal­leries, some­times fol­lowed by a “Hell, my dog/cat/baby/elephant could do that!” Sophis­ti­cates smirk know­ing smirks. Oh no, sir or madam, they most cer­tain­ly could not. But maybe every­one, at some lev­el, comes across Agnes Martin’s White Stone or Jo Baer’s Unti­tled (White Square Laven­der) and thinks it looks like some­one “just took a tube of white paint and spread it on a can­vas.”

It’s tempt­ing to imag­ine, notes Vox in the explain­er video above, but “it’s not actu­al­ly that easy.”

Oh, real­ly? Enlight­en us…. Why exact­ly did Robert Ryman’s all-white paint­ing Bridge sell for $20.6 mil­lion dol­lars? This ques­tion may be answered in anoth­er video. Here, we get a lit­tle bit of art history—on the ori­gins of the all-white paint­ing in the min­i­mal­ism of Kaz­imir Male­vich (he pre­ferred to call it “Supre­ma­tism”) and the devel­op­ment of Min­i­mal­ism, cap­i­tal “M.”

Elis­a­beth Sher­man, assis­tant cura­tor at the Whit­ney Muse­um in New York says that “white isn’t ever a pure thing, white is always tint­ed in some way.” Of course we know this, she acknowl­edges, because we’ve mar­veled at the dozens of shades of white in the paint sec­tion of the hard­ware store. Attend to the sub­tle gra­da­tions of white, from warm to cool, and the range of tex­tures, lines, pat­terns, shapes, and “sub­tle intri­ca­cies,” and the all-white paint­ing begins to reveal itself as an almost liv­ing, breath­ing thing rather than a piece of dec­o­ra­tive dry­wall.

Art his­tor­i­cal­ly, the vari­ety of white paint­ings came about prin­ci­pal­ly in the 50s as a response to Abstract Expressionism’s emo­tion­al excess­es and the out­sized ges­tur­al per­son­al­i­ties of De Koon­ing and Pol­lock. Artists like Bauhaus alum Josef Albers and Min­i­mal­ist purist Frank Stel­la pro­posed that “the art object” should “be as far removed from the author as pos­si­ble.” No greater an attack could be launched on the idea of art as per­son­al expres­sion than the all-white paint­ing.

This ten­den­cy toward total abstraction—reducing art to fields of col­or, non-col­or, and sim­ple shapes—has made a lot of peo­ple very upset. Vox includes sev­er­al clips of “men get­ting angry” at Min­i­mal­ist art. The word “pre­ten­tious” pops up a lot. The all-white paint­ing has even inspired a play, Yas­mi­na Reza’s Art, about “a group of life­long friends who are torn apart when one of them buys an all-white paint­ing for $200,000.”

As for “I could do that”… in near­ly every show she’s worked on in her career as a cura­tor, Sher­man remarks, “some­one has said that.” Well, she says, yes, maybe you could. “But you didn’t.” So there. If look­ing at an all-white paint­ing (or an all-black paint­ing) makes you feel angry, annoyed, or dis­mis­sive, maybe, she says, try and get beyond that first impres­sion and engage with the sub­tleties of the work. And maybe don’t ask how much the muse­um paid for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Puts Online a Huge Col­lec­tion of Bauhaus Art Objects

Watch At the Muse­um, MoMA’s 8‑Part Doc­u­men­tary on What it Takes to Run a World-Class Muse­um

The Tree of Mod­ern Art: Ele­gant Draw­ing Visu­al­izes the Devel­op­ment of Mod­ern Art from Delacroix to Dalí (1940)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

At first glance, the octo­pus in the video above might appear to be breath­ing. A sec­ond look reveals that it isn’t actu­al­ly breath­ing, nor is it actu­al­ly an octo­pus at all, but seem­ing­ly just a high­ly detailed draw­ing of one. Only upon the third look, if even then, does it become clear that the octo­pus has been not drawn but intri­cate­ly cut, and out of a sin­gle large sheet of paper at that. The two-dimen­sion­al sea crea­ture rep­re­sents a recent high point in the work of Japan­ese artist Masayo Fuku­da, who has prac­ticed this curi­ous craft, known as kirie, for more than a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry now.

“Kirie (切り絵, lit­er­al­ly ‘cut pic­ture’) is the Japan­ese art of paper-cut­ting,” writes Spoon & Tam­ago’s John­ny Wald­man. “Vari­a­tions of kirie can be found in cul­tures around the world but the Japan­ese ver­sion is said to be derived from reli­gious cer­e­monies and can be traced back to around the AD 700s.

In its most con­ven­tion­al form, neg­a­tive space is cut from a sin­gle sheet of white paper and then con­trast­ed against a black back­ground to reveal a ren­der­ing.” Such painstak­ing work, and the aston­ish­ing­ly impres­sive artis­tic results that can come out of it, fit right in with the image of Japan­ese art and crafts­man­ship as the world now appre­ci­ates it. Bored Pan­da quotes Fuku­da as say­ing that “cut­ting pic­tures has become a way of dis­si­pat­ing all the stress of my dai­ly life.”

If you, too, would like to seek the ben­e­fits of a reg­u­lar kirie prac­tice, you don’t need much in the way of equip­ment: “All the basics you need are TANT paper” — a brand of paper made espe­cial­ly for origa­mi and oth­er paper crafts — “a cut­ter, mat­te, and a good light source.” Of course, if you look only to the work of an expe­ri­enced mas­ter like Fuku­da (which will go on dis­play, Wald­man notes, this April at Osaka’s Miraie Gallery) for exam­ples, you’re like­ly to get frus­trat­ed very quick­ly indeed.

You might con­sid­er first get­ting a broad­er overview of kirie as cur­rent­ly prac­ticed, start­ing with this five-minute doc­u­men­tary show­cas­ing the work of oth­er paper-cut­ting enthu­si­asts in Japan. Set aside enough time for it, and approach your sheet of paper with enough patience every day, and — who knows? — one day your octo­pus, too, may breathe.

via Spoon & Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

Design­er Cre­ates Origa­mi Card­board Tents to Shel­ter the Home­less from the Win­ter Cold

MIT Cre­ates Amaz­ing Self-Fold­ing Origa­mi Robots & Leap­ing Chee­tah Robots

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.