Modern

Modern, on this page, describes a treatment rather than a subject. Look along the collection and you will find a eucalyptus sprig, a seashell, a rib cage, a Bauhaus arch, a gold palm leaf, a navy brush stroke, two hands making a pinky promise and an evil eye. Nothing links those by what they depict. What links them is what was taken out: fewer elements than the real thing has, edges that simply stop instead of fading into a decorative border, and no flourish added to make the picture look like art. A modern print is a subtracted one.

That is a useful test when you are standing in a room deciding. Ask whether the print would still look right hanging on bare white plaster with no frame around it. Work that needs a mount, a mat and a gilt edge to look finished is not modern work, whatever it depicts; the mid-century suns, the neo-geometric Bauhaus pairs, the single black leaf, the brush stroke and the line-drawn figures here all survive that test on their own.

What is the difference between modern, mid-century and contemporary?

They get used interchangeably and they are not the same thing. Mid-century is a dated style with a fixed vocabulary — the banded sun, the arch, the desert horizon, clay and ochre and warm white — and I keep those on their own page. Contemporary just means recently made, which tells you nothing about how it looks. Modern, as I use it, is the treatment described above: reduction, clean edges, restraint, whatever the subject. That is why an anatomical rib cage and a seashell can both be modern, and why a very recently painted romantic floral is not.

How far away will it be seen from?

This is the question that decides most of these prints and the one most people skip. Modern work holds up at distance. Strip a picture down to a few strong shapes and it still reads from four or five metres across an open-plan room, which is exactly where detailed, finely worked painting turns into an indistinct smudge. So the pieces here are the right answer for the long sightline — the wall you see from the kitchen island, the one at the end of a hallway, the stretch above a stairwell. The reverse holds too: a close wall you pass at arm's length, beside a desk or in a reading corner, can carry much more detail than this page offers, and a reduced print there can feel a little empty.

Does modern art only suit a modern house?

No, and the mismatch is often the point. A reduced print is the easiest thing to put in a room full of older furniture, because it does not try to compete on detail — it reads as a quiet flat plane against a carved sideboard or a patterned rug, and the contrast flatters both. Where it genuinely struggles is a room with a lot of strong architectural detail at the same scale as the artwork: deep cornicing, a busy fireplace surround, panelled walls. There the print needs to go larger and plainer, or move to the one unbroken wall in the room.

Nearby pages, if you want to narrow things: minimalist wall art for the quietest end of this, mid-century modern prints for the retro vocabulary, and abstract wall art for the gestural work. All seven sizes, 5x7 up to 16x20 in (13x18 to 41x51 cm), printed to order and shipped unframed.