Conceptual artist Daniel Buren is known for his ongoing series of works featuring alternating white and colored stripes, 8.7 cm (3 2/5 in.) wide. These printed announcements for an exhibition in Belgium feature Buren’s signature stripes at full scale. Stripes like these are commonly seen on awnings and commercial signs in France. The evenly spaced stripes have an ambiguous figure/ground relationship; likewise, Buren’s work challenges the separation of works of art from their environmental and institutional setting.
Poster, Exhibition Poster for Wide White Space Gallery (Antwerp, Belgium), 1971. Designed by Daniel Buren (French, b. 1938) Offset lithographs. 52.1 × 77.5 cm (20 1/2 × 30 1/2 in.). Museum purchase from General Acquisitions Endowment and Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program Funds, 1999-45-8
Ellen Lupton is Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and Director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art.
The exhibition How Posters Work is currently on view at Cooper Hewitt through November 15, 2015. You can learn more at the exhibition homepage and find the book How Posters Work at SHOP Cooper Hewitt. #HowPostersWork
