Frank Bowling, Dan Johnson’s Surprise, 1969

Narrator: In Dan Johnson’s Surprise, Frank Bowling—who was born in Guyana—used a map of South America to structure a largely abstract composition. In this 2012 interview with the Tate Modern, he described his approach at the time he made this work. 

Frank Bowling: In my youth I tended to look at the tragic side of human behavior and try and reflect that in my work, but gradually as I became more involved in the making of paintings, I realized that one of the main ingredients in making paintings was color and geometry. 

And then, by sheer chance, the map shapes appeared whilst I was in Hotel Chelsea, so I started painting maps of South America and Guyana, and then I decided that I would do the entire flat map as a motif to work with. I just found the shapes and graphics suggested in maps very engaging.

Darby English: He was completely identified with that language of modernism, but something stops Bowling from going all the way abstract, and he lets you know that by putting a figure or an outline of the South American continent into the painting.

Narrator: Darby English is an art historian, and author of 1971: A Year in the Life of Color. 

Darby English: He had to leave a little bit of the world in, and that to me is what I think he’s doing at this moment.