The paint
Spray paint only became readily available commercially in the late 1940s, so this work, in which it is mixed with hand-painted emulsion on board, is an early example of its use in contemporary art. It comes as no surprise, however: Latham was always an innovator and is regarded as a great figure of the British avant garde.
The event
This piece laid the groundwork for the artist’s idea of the “least event”. This philosophy saw Latham produce a whole new cosmology in which existence as we know is made up of “events”. The least event is the closest the artist can achieve to nothing. Tricky stuff, but it did lead him to produce a whole series of paintings involving spray cans used for just one second.
The woman
This not to say this work is about nothing. In fact, for all the painting’s debt to abstraction and the artist’s avant-garde spirit, here Latham returns to one of the oldest subjects in art, the reclining woman.
The history
This painting has had a colourful life. It is one of 15 paintings first shown in London in the mid-1950s, only to be sold down the Six Bells pub on the King’s Road a decade later. It only resurfaced a few years ago.
The renaissance
Latham seems to be having a moment just now. Sleep is the starting point for Lisson Gallery’s exhibition of the artist’s spray works, while other work by the artist is also included in concurrent shows at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, Modern Art Oxford, and London’s Tate Britain.
