Cracked
Surfaces split by fissures, fractures or fine crazing, whether caused by age and accident or cultivated on purpose.
1 work · 10 related artists
About
Cracks can be damage, record or design. In old oil paintings a web of craquelure forms as paint and varnish age, and conservators read its pattern for clues to a picture's history. Chinese potters of the Song dynasty turned the effect into an ideal: Ge and Guan wares carry deliberately crackled glazes, the lines sometimes stained so they stand out. In Japan, kintsugi mends broken ceramics with lacquer dusted in gold, making the break part of the object's beauty.
Modern artists have used splitting surfaces for their own purposes. Alberto Burri let thick layers of paste dry and fracture in his Cretti of the 1970s, producing surfaces like parched earth. Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth (2007) ran a long fissure through the concrete floor of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Look for whether a crack is inherited from time or engineered by the artist.