Object Type: Print

Dimensions:

Medium and Support: Color etching on handmade paper

Accession Number: 1997.0005.0003

Credit Line: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts Association Purchase and Gift of Fred and Ellie Ernst

Jennifer Bartlett's early work blended ideas pulled from both Minimal and Conceptual art. Yet, in the late 1970s, she moved in a new direction. She became associated with the New Image movement through her use of figurative and representational imagery against an abstracted background, and the Pattern and Decoration movement as seen in her use of bold colors and a decorative grid. These interests are apparent in this piece from 1994.

Bartlett's narrative and image-based works utilized photography. However, unlike the Photorealists, the artist did not try to replicate the photographic image in great detail. Instead, her snapshots served only as a reference point. For example, 6 P.M, belongs to series of prints based upon a group of 24 paintings that Bartlett created from photographs she took of her home and garden every hour of one day. These images demonstrate her systematic combination of grids and multiple angles to depict an ordinary scene—a view across a swimming pool.
The 60 x 60 grid Bartlett used as a basis for her paintings represents the minutes and seconds in each hour. In some canvases, this underlying grid is an important component of the work while in others it is barely visible. In each painting, two smaller grids also appear representing a minute divided into seconds, and 6 minutes worth of seconds painted in plaid. Further emphasizing the importance of time in these works, a clock is included in every painting indicating the hour given in the title. Finally, each painting contains a plain colored square which represents the base colors used for each composition.