John Nixon
Artist of the Monochrome
works from 1968 — 2020

The title of this exhi­bi­tion derives from a call­ing card off­set print­ed by John in the 1990s, which states in plain Hel­veti­ca, black ink on white card: ​‘John Nixon: Artist of the Mono­chrome’. With this sim­ple yet pro­found descrip­tion of him­self, John affirms his strong sense of per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with this most fun­da­men­tal of mod­ernist arche­types — the epit­o­me of non-objec­tive abstrac­tion. His life­long inves­ti­ga­tion of the mono­chrome, in all its stark sim­plic­i­ty and nuanced com­plex­i­ty, is a con­tin­u­ous and vital aspect of his mul­ti­fac­eted oeuvre.

Nixon’s very first paint­ings from 1968 — the works he con­sid­ered foun­da­tion­al to his prac­tice — were mono­chromes: black Dulux enam­el on can­vas, raw can­vas, and red or grey felt among oth­er pri­ma­ry exam­ples, scaled to just 9 × 9 × 4 cm. Their com­pact size and blocky shape gave rise to his term for them, Block Paint­ings. From that time onwards, John explored the mono­chrome at var­i­ous scales and through the wide vari­ety of quo­tid­i­an mate­ri­als char­ac­ter­is­tic of his oeu­vre, return­ing repeat­ed­ly to one-colour paint­ing as a gen­er­a­tive touch­stone or ​‘zero point’ for his wide-rang­ing and explorato­ry practice.

By strip­ping art of the dis­trac­tions of nar­ra­tive and fig­u­ra­tion, the mono­chrome became for him a means of con­cen­trat­ing on the essen­tial ques­tion of art itself — its very nature and pur­pose — as he artic­u­lates with both rigour and poet­ry in his 1993 text, repub­lished here, and through the diverse works on dis­play in this exhi­bi­tion.

Sue Cramer, 2025



MONO­CHROME

1.THE MONO­CHROME IS AN EXIS­TEN­TIAL ​‘FREE SPACE’.

2. MONO­CHROME PAINT­ING IS AN IDE­O­LOG­I­CAL MOD­EL OF ART
AGAINST THE CON­VEN­TION­AL, THE PIC­TO­R­I­AL, THE ORNA­MEN­TAL
AND THE NAR­RA­TIVE.

3. THE PAINT­INGS ARE BY DEF­I­N­I­TION MIN­I­MAL AND REP­RE­SENT AN
ANALY­SIS OF THEIR OWN EPIS­TE­MOL­O­GY AND ONTOL­OGY FOCUS­ING
ON THE FUN­DA­MEN­TALS OF PAINT­ING, ITS FOR­MAL AND ANA­LYT­I­CAL
NATURE AND ITS NON-OBJEC­TIV­I­TY.

4. IN TERMS OF A THE­O­RY OF ART THE WORKS ARE LIT­ER­AL AND
DEFIN­I­TIVE (AUTONOMOUS) BUT AS SUCH OFFER A FREE­DOM OF
DEVEL­OP­MENT AND EXPER­I­MENT.

5. WHAT MAKES ALL MONO­CHROME PAINT­INGS DIF­FER­ENT FROM
EACH OTH­ER ARE PRE­CISE­LY THOSE ELE­MENTS WHICH MAKE THE
OBJECTS OF EVERY­DAY LIFE E.G. CHAIRS, COATS, PLATES,
DEMON­STRA­BLY DIF­FER­ENT IE. THEIR MOMENT IN HIS­TO­RY, THE
CITIES WHERE THEY ARE MADE, THE METH­ODS OF THEIR
PRO­DUC­TION, THEIR SIZES, MATE­RI­ALS AND COLOURS.

6. THE PRAC­TICE OF MONO­CHROME PAINT­ING IS A CON­TIN­U­UM
WITH­IN A HIS­TO­RY THAT IS NOT LIN­EAR, BUT IS A WIDER ONGO­ING
RESEARCH INTO THE THE­SIS OF PAINT­ING.

7. THE RESEARCH IS DIVERSE, POET­IC AND CRIT­I­CAL.

8. THE MONO­CHROME IS THE CON­STANT ZERO-POINT GROUND­ING
THE WORK IN A DIALEC­TI­CAL BETWEEN PURI­TY AND ANAR­CHY,
HIS­TO­RY AND THE PRESENT.


JOHN NIXON
SYD­NEY 3.12.93