Once upon a time, I started a #blackandwhiteseries on Instagram to talk about ways to frame black and white art.
And by art, I mean documents, prints, painting, photographs, whatever : )
The idea for the series sprung from a happenstance discovery of a vintage Picasso book, found during a cleaning spree.
In particular, this two-page spread.
Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica is arguably the most famous war protest masterpiece in Modern Art. His motivation, a massacre in his home country of Spain. Painted in 1937, the suffering and turmoil illustrated in the mural are palatable.
Unlike the image in my small 7 inch by 7 inch book, the original is huge!
The mural hangs in a dedicated gallery at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofia and measures over 11 feet tall by 25 and a half feet wide.
Just imagine, my little Picasso book is smaller than one of the gallery’s floor tiles.
On the day I visited this room, a sea of humanity filled the space from that tiny tripwire to the facing wall. I courteously elbowed my way to the front. Apologizing to everyone I bumped into in English, interrupting their musings in other languages, I made my way to get a better view of the frame.
As you can see, you can’t really see it.
Which is fantastic!
The piece is dramatic and painful and oppressive. Any ornate display treatment would be ingenuine and distracting. And given the size of the art, nearly impossible to do properly.
Picasso painted Guernica in black, white and cool tone grays.
His flattened, cubistic style of painting does not include much blending, so the panels of color are distinct. The only true black and white paint are at the heart of the image, the focal point, where the artist wants to draw your eye. The background, or negative space, leading to the edges, is a deep gray. There’s a newspaper sense to the piece. Like Picasso is reporting from a horrific scene and his camera has a super funky lens.
The original painting has a simple, narrow industrial style frame that covers a minimal amount of the piece. The charcoal color of the frame picks up on the mural’s edge and gives a nice finish.
Perfecto!
The process of choosing the correct display for a color-void piece such as Guernica can be so much more complicated than most people believe it should be.
And I get it.
Frame shop clients believe there should be one go-to solution for framing black & white photos or documents.
Perhaps a white mat and a plain black frame?
Sure.
That will do nicely in many cases.
However, in this world of a zillion choices, framing black & white is not always black and white.
Let me show you a few more options.
Let’s start at the start.
As we’ve seen with the Guernica, not all black & whites are truly black AND white.
Like life, there are gray areas.
Man has been expressing ideas for centuries with dark line on light media. Drawing. Printmaking. Eventually movable type.
When photography came into being, our understanding of black & white took a huge turn by showing us the world in an array from black to white.
Henceforth, all the beautiful shades of gray were included.
Whether or not you’ve considered the differentiation here, between a true black AND white and a one with shades of gray, it is a real thing (at least when it comes to framing solutions).
So, first things first.
What artwork are you wanting to frame?
There are two types of Black & Whites
By first identifying which you have, Sharp Contrast or Gray Tones, you will simplify your framing process.
Here are examples of each.
This sign is black & white
I know.
Duh.
But stick with me, I have a point to make.
Signs like this one that present the viewer with chromatic opposites (black ink on white media) as well as documents, certificates, line drawings, linocuts, woodcuts, lithographs, serigraphs and such, are considered to be in sharp contrast.
Dictionaries define in sharp contrast as one object being very different from another.
When applied to visual art, contrast is the differences between the elements. Dark and light. Smooth and textured. Large and small. It is a primary design principle and one that most of us understand on a primitive level.
Sharp contrast directs the viewer’s attention to a focal point within a work of art or words on a sign.
My typical approach to framing Sharp Contrast black & whites is to pair a mat and frame to the colors used in the piece. You can find an example of this on Day 1 of my Instagram series or by clicking here.
This is a black & white photograph
And this photo is our second example of black & white.
Like Picasso’s Guernica, the photograph above is comprised of a range of grays. The darkest is black, while the white is not quite white but a pale, pale gray. Shadows and highlights appear, only where the “colors” have been removed.
Gray tones. Once you introduce mid-tones between black and white, and you have a scale of tones, as in photographs or paintings, your black and white framing options become a little more complicated.
Where black & white text or a black & white drawing can easily be matched with a white mat and black frame, or even just a black moulding, when you have gray tones, sometimes a gray makes a better choice.
I’m still working on my Instagram #blackandwhiteseries.
Links will be added once the gray tone framing is available.
Until then, please feel free to peruse the other posts.
Okay, one last black & white photo : )
Pin, if you like…
Well, there it is in black and white. Any questions for me?
