Member-only story
3 Things I Googled This Week: Can Art Save A Wretch Like Me?
5 min readSep 17, 2020
- Lucio Fontana Slash Painting Kim Kardashian
A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a photo of Kim Kardashian West’s house. It was a picture of a white wall, white couches, white carpet, and a white painting over a white fireplace. It wasn’t just any painting, it was one of my favorites. It was one of Lucio Fontana’s spatial concept artworks or what is known as Slash Paintings. I’m not sure why but anger grew inside of me. Honestly, I can scroll through Instagram pretty easily and not fall into a hatred spiral, like I hear others do. But this felt too far. For one, there was no credit to this brilliant man.
It took me a week to google it to see if anyone was talking about it. Lo and behold, there is nothing. Not a single article linking the West’s to Lucio Fontana. Was it because people don’t know about him or because they do not care? It makes my heart hurt for some reason. Art history is being wasted to fit an aesthetic.
Lucio Fontana is regarded as one of the fathers of contemporary art. In 1968 Fontana told an interviewer, “My discovery was the hole and that’s it. I am happy to go to the grave after such a discovery.” (Quoted in Whitfield)
When I look at the slash painting, I see an artist staring at this object that can become anything. I see myself. I see thousands of others. If you have ever tried to start a piece of art or write sometime…
