Contraband
1969

Narrator: Lynda Benglis, Contraband, 1969. Contraband is an irregularly shaped pigmented latex “spill” displayed on the floor. The spill measures just over 9 feet tall and 33 feet wide and is about an inch thick. It is positioned diagonally in the middle of the gallery space. Composed of blue, green, red, orange, yellow, and the hues made from colors mixing, this work offers a non-shape as a deliberate alternative to the rigidity of paintings stretched on canvas. The spill’s center is primarily dark blue with pink, yellow, and flecks of green swirled within. The blue “center” extends tendrils of varying sizes to the upper right where the blue latex pools, almost suggesting a river’s course meeting the mouth of an ocean. On the left side of the spill, orange, yellow, and red gather to resemble bumbling lava, a gooey portal where some greens and blues swirl and puddle. Like many of her contemporaries, Benglis didn’t try to represent specific images or content in her work. But her approach was  influenced by nature, politics, bodily emissions, and contemporary technologies. 

The work’s title, Contraband, references a bayou of the same name near her childhood home in Louisiana, and Benglis said the work reminded her of oil slicks on the water. This reference, along with the artwork’s faded Day Glo hues and industrial scale, brings to mind the destruction of natural landscapes. In doing so, Contraband might even question art’s relationship to the environment and the resources we extract from it.

Lynda Benglis: Me llamo Lynda Benglis y el nombre de la obra es Contraband. La hice en 1969. 

Sabía que la pintura tendría una combinación de colores y que, en este caso, usaría látex de caucho… este tipo de caucho tiene un grado de viscosidad importante, similar a una crema bien, bien espesa justo antes de convertirse en manteca. Estos son colores ultravioletas. El nombre del negocio era DayGlo; pedí 500 libras de los colores y los puse en mi pequeño estudio. Cuando iba a estudios más amplios, pintaba contenedores grandes con el látex de caucho y vertía la pintura sobre linóleo encerado y, a veces, directamente en el suelo. La escala la determinaban los lugares donde hacía el trabajo. 

Narrator: Benglis creció en Luisiana, cerca del pantano Contraband. Le dio este nombre a la obra porque le recuerda a los derrames tóxicos de petróleo en las masas de agua. 

Lynda Benglis: La obra en sí es una especie de reclamo. No está… Se mueve, es el gesto congelado, en cierto sentido. Denota la naturaleza. 

Por algún motivo, todavía me considero pintora. Creo que, si bien pinto con sustancias líquidas, estoy creando objetos con dimensión, que tienen un sentido de su propio espacio, pero que demandan algo de la audiencia, que debe caminar para verlos bien. 

Lynda Benglis: My name is Lynda Benglis and the name is Contraband. I did it in 1969. 

These are ultra-violet colors. The trade name was DayGlo, and I ordered 500 pounds of the colors, and had them in my small studio and would go into larger studios and actually pigment large vats of rubber latex, and I would pour the painting on waxed linoleum and sometimes directly on the floor. The scale was dictated by the places that I actually did the work.

Narrator: Benglis grew up in Louisiana, near the Contraband bayou. She titled this work because it reminded her of toxic oil slicks on the water.

Lynda Benglis: The work itself has a certain kind of demand, it’s moving. It bespeaks of nature. 

I still think of myself as a painter for some reason. I think I'm painting with liquids but making objects that are dimensional, that have a sense of their own space, but demand some viewing in terms of walking around.