Post Gestural, Neo-Geo Abstraction, Untitled No.1
or
Two boys injured after a 1,000lb bomb was dropped on a house in Managua; the boys died shortly after this photograph was taken
1988
Oil on canvas
At first glance, this painting appears to belong comfortably within the language of late-1980s abstraction. A geometric grid, gestural brushwork and an apparently self-referential title evoke the discourse of Neo-Geo and post-painterly abstraction, positioning the work within a period when painting was frequently understood as a conversation with its own history.
The alternative title fundamentally alters that reading.
Rather than an autonomous abstract composition, the painting is revealed as a transcription of a press photograph depicting two Nicaraguan boys mortally wounded after a 1,000-pound bomb destroyed their home in Managua. Their image has not been illustrated or dramatised but translated into paint until it hovers on the threshold between visibility and disappearance.
The work stages a confrontation between aesthetic autonomy and historical reality. It asks whether abstraction can remain detached from the political conditions in which it is produced and viewed, or whether history inevitably persists beneath even the most formalist surfaces.
Made in 1988 and first exhibited in Post-Morality at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, the painting anticipates concerns that would become central to Wagg’s later practice: the transformation of documentary images into painting, the ethics of representation, and the relationship between historical events and aesthetic form.
Polly – Tickle and Polly – Titian
