A monochrome painting by Stieg Persson

It is 1939 in Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles. On Stage 6, Basil Rathbone is rehearsing a fencing duel which will end with his stage death. An electrician’s error drops the set into darkness; the last whipping pass of his sabre whiffs out a candle and leaves a ribbon of light curling across the blackness; he laughs.

It is 450000BCE off the coast of what will be Guam. Thousands of feet below the surface there is no light but a small fish is evolving to phosphoresce. His luminosity would be the envy of his forefathers. He is ugly. His eyeless face is like a melting wax fist.

It is 2007. An artist flies Quantas at night over Australia. She looks down and sees nothing for many hours. She sees a tiny light and wonders who is down there. Otherwise all is darkness. This means she is free to sculpt anything. She has not been to Australia before.

It is 1947 and Robert Motherwell realises “I belong….to a family of “black” painters and earth colour painters in masses, which would include Manet and Goya and Matisse.” Later he thinks his colour world developed as he looked at his mother’s waxed fruitwood furniture.

It is 1952 in Nevada. Harold Edgerton sets up his rapatronic cameras. Soon an atom bomb will explode. It begins. One nanosecond after detonation, the ball of gas hovers in the night sky, pale, smooth, swelling, its surface formed of regular geometric patterns. He is reminded of something he has known. Three nanoseconds later, the gas ball is the size of Manhattan and seven times hotter than the sun.

It is 1972 in Birmingham, England. A six year old girl is sitting in the dark waiting for a film to begin. Some music she does not know fills her with grandiosity and horror. A black monolith swings into view on the screen; dark shafts of light sweep across it. She should not be here but her parents have smuggled her in.

It is 2525. The air is dark and thick with tarry particles , the sun is a waxy glow, and it has been like this for 200 years. It’s not pretty but no one is here to see it. Some moths miss the moon so much they have learned to glow for each other; the only art now is the light ribbons they draw to attract a mate.

It is 1981 in Melbourne. A young painter is giving away his tubes of colour. He feels he will not be needing them; from now on he will say it all with black. His tutors are irritated.

It is 1998 in a hospital in Toronto. An 18 year old man lies in a persistent vegetative state after an unexplained accident four years ago. He can see a confusion of pale lights and hears everything. He is not anxious. His mother is there reading to him a novel , “Tlooth”. He hopes that next she will read him “Notes from Underground” .

Eleanor Crook

re: Stieg Persson's painting "Filling the Void" 1986 Oil on canvas 182.7 x 167.5 cm Collection Monash University, Melbourne