2. Christopher Wool – Apocalypse Now 1988
Artist Christopher Wool is best known for his paintings of large, black, stencilled letters on white canvases. The artist began to create word paintings in the late 1980s, apparently after seeing graffiti on a brand new white truck. Using a system of alliteration, with the words often broken up by a grid system, or with the vowels removed (as in ‘TRBL’ or ‘DRNK’), Wool’s word paintings often demand reading aloud to make sense. Wool and fellow artist Robert Gober presented a collaborative exhibition and installation at 303 Gallery in 1988, which included Wool’s seminal text-based painting, ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1988). The work features words from a famous line in the Francis Ford Coppola film – based on the Joseph Conrad novel ‘Heart of Darkness’ – from Lieutenant Richard M. Colby’s last letter to his wife, as read by Martin Sheen’s character Willard, ‘Sell the house. Sell the car. Sell the kids. Find someone else. Forget it. I’m never coming back.’ But you won’t forget this monochromatic WRK of RT.