The home screen of Roman Opałka’s website says that on August 6, 2011 he ‘completed his work’. That was the day that the Polish artist died at the age of 79, thereby bringing an end to a project titled ‘Opałka: 1965 / 1 – ∞’ which had occupied him for more than 45 years.
At work in Warsaw in 1965, Opałka took a piece of canvas identical in size to his studio door (196x135cm) and painted it black; then, in white, he began to paint numbers from the top left corner down to the bottom right. The enumeration of this simple, endless sequence was what he dedicated his life to.
Each time a canvas was complete Opałka started a new one of exactly the same dimensions, though over time he did alter the colouring. The black canvasses gave way to grey in 1968, the fourth year of the project, and another four years after that Opałka decided to start lightening the canvasses sequentially, adding 1% more white to the paint which covered each new one that he started.
By 2008, 36 years later, this progression meant that Opałka was painting in white on white, which he called ‘blanc mérité’: white well earned.
There is something heroic about this scale of undertaking, and the immeasurable dedication which it must have required. I suspect that what I find fascinating about this kind of project has something to do with the greater purpose and power of art itself. Surely there were times when Opałka had to face the futility of what he was doing; he must have questioned the worth of his work. And yet he persisted, and leaves behind a monument to both the finite and infinity, which leaves such considerations meaningless.
