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Artforum PRINT March 1967

Ronald Bladen’s “Black Triangle”
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BLACK TRIANGLE—THE SOLE EXHIBIT in Ronald Bladen’s one-man show at Fischbach—rests arrogantly on
its point, toward the back of the room, so that one can keep one’s distance if its precarious
stance overwhelms. In fact, it is the piece itself rather than its resistance of gravity that
overwhelms. (The safety factor is not conspicuous, though at the opening the crowd remained at the
other end of the room rather than risking conversation under those overhanging, and awe-inspiring
planes.) A solid inverted roof form 9' 4'' high, 10' long and 12' across the top, it is specific in
what it does more than in what it is, and the same can be said of the immense (8 x 8 x 16') topped
white box (Untitled) at the Whitney Annual.

Weight means both everything and nothing to the effect of these two pieces. It is there to be
denied. The not overly expert plywood construction, matter-of-fact paint jobs and visible, often
open seams, work against mass and solidity, while the scale, size and suspension of bulk emphasize
area and angle. Despite their gigantism, both sculptures are decidedly planar rather than
volumetric, and it is as a construct of planes, or area, that they must be experienced. The
uniqueness of Bladen’s proposition is the particular manner in which the angles operate on the
areas. The aggressive dynamism of many of his earlier works, especially the three-unit structure
shown at the Jewish Museum last spring, is now qualified and strengthened. There was a tinge of the
obvious or the theatrical in those three leaning columns which was largely overridden by the
justice of interval and angle. That same quality persists in the idea per se of a triangular form
balancing on its apex but the proportions again are just, and the ground line is long enough to
dispel the illusion of imminent collapse. Precariousness is not Bladen’s end, and as a means, it is
increasingly well employed.

The concept of the white box at the Whitney is more impressive simply because it is more
unexpected. Boxes—with all those flat planes to rest on—are supposed to sit squarely on the floor.
The slight tilt which keeps the four edges of this one from one to six inches off the floor is just
eccentric enough to unsettle the concept of box as visible form in space, and not eccentric enough
to be a stunt. Literalism is, like weight, in suspension. (Not only does the white box achieve
weightlessness for an awkward hulk, but it rearranges the known contour.) The tilt is not allowed
to exaggerate; the sharp black shadow on the floor beneath the highest edge does not extend past
the piece itself, but underlines the angle and area. Whereas the triangle is a neat, even graceful
shape, and can be apprehended frontally as a two-dimensional form entirely devoid of mass, the
white box is flat from no angle, and because of its size can never be taken in at a glance. Shown
under opposite conditions from the triangle, it is in a huge room crammed with other sculptures of
great variety (in color, shape, intent and quality). It is the largest piece there, but by no means
the most assertive, remaining aloof from its environment (and demanding a context rather different
from most of the pieces surrounding it). For the record, it has no interior framework but is
cantilevered off a relatively small false concrete base; the vertical panels (four on the long
sides and two on the ends) are held up by diagonal bracing and are standard size building lengths
(4 x 8'), so the justice of proportion was initially established by outside factors. I was more
moved by this than by Black Triangle, but the source of the emotion is more difficult to pin down.


Like Tony Smith, in his recent work, Bladen rejects inertia. Probably, he never considered it; he
has never made an absolutely symmetrical piece. What Black Triangle does to space is not a matter
of definition but of emphasis. The great slanting planes with their implications of infinity
neither draw upon nor enclose space, but slice it, alter it. This is felt by the viewer in an
almost visceral manner. Standing in the shadow of the triangle it is difficult to remain detached
from the thing that shares your space. When such structural works first appeared on the scene the
word architectonic was most often used to describe them. But architecture is shelter and enclosure
that can be experienced. Bladen’s work has only scale in common with architecture. It is sculpture
made of planes, non-sculptural in the sense that its formal simplicity and weightlessness are
unfamiliar in the historical confines of sculpture concerned with volume or line, but sculptural in
the sense that it is nothing else, and that, far more than the work of other structurists, it
insists upon taking the initiative, no matter how understated the results of its actions may be.

Both the box and the triangle communicate a strong sense of their physical properties, their
extension of area beyond the fact of simple surface. They remind me of Bladen’s 1964 Architectural
Construction #2 (shown in Artforum, Oct. 1966, p. 34) which, though more complex and less clearly
constructed, and not enclosing space, worked, and worked well, in the same suspension between
static and dynamic, with a similar relationship to the ceiling and ground planes between which it
was placed. Architectural Construction #2 was shown twice, at the old Park Place and at NYU’s Loeb
Center, and it weathered the distinct change in environment, retaining its scale and particularity.
I mention this because Black Triangle reaches from the floor to the cement beams of the Fischbach,
thereby filling the space between floor and ceiling. This placement unavoidably affects the form
itself, since its native buoyancy is somewhat minimized by the pressure of the beam. This turned
out to be for reasons of safety, not esthetics, as is the lightly squared-off point on which it
rests—an attempt to carry the illusion as far as it can be carried, but not, finally, to depend on
illusion. (The perfectionism and “finish fetish” of much current work has gotten to us all, but I
suspect that the whole of any sculpture is threatened in which working details of minor defects
really irritate.) It is a measure or Bladen’s success that the area between diagrammatic ideal and
constructed fact, the heavy beamed ceiling cluttered with lights, the constructional
irregularities, are unable to minimize the sculptural presence of Black Triangle. I would be
curious to see it outdoors, or in a room with a much higher ceiling, because I think it would, of
necessity, change. But the sense of tremendous expansion and pure breadth discovered from the
various vantage points would probably not be altered.

—Lucy Lippard