Hard-Edge Painting
ハードエッジ・ペインティング / 1959–1970s / Style / Geometric Abstraction
Painting that keeps every boundary perfectly sharp and builds the picture out of flat planes of colour alone. Brushwork and gradation are excluded, so the edge of a plane becomes the only event. The precise edge obtained by masking is the direct ancestor of later flat design and vector work.
Perfectly sharp boundaries between planes / Flat colour with no gradation / A few large planes only / The shape itself determining the support
Dictionary entry
- Best used for
- Identity and signage systems that must survive at any scale in flat colour, with no gradient or shadow left to reproduce badly · Interface and icon work built on hard vector silhouettes, where legibility is purely a function of edge and area
- Type
- A geometric sans in a single weight, treated as a flat plane of its own and aligned to the same edges as the colour.
- Composition
- Two to four fields dividing the format, with the division placed off any obvious fraction so the areas stay in tension.
- Material
- Flat, opaque, unmodulated colour with the edge cut mechanically, showing neither overlap nor a light halo.
- Caution
- Softening one edge for depth: a single feathered boundary reintroduces illusionistic space, and the picture reverts to being a picture of something.
- Further study
- Jules Langsner's coining of the term in 1959 / Its development into the shaped canvas / The psychological effect of plane and edge