This work of art consists of sheets of coloured paper hung in accordance with a particular system. The number of sheets to be installed varies, depending on the number of walls available. The work interacts with the room it is shown in, which also partially defines its form.
In his 1977 Notes sur le Non-Peint (Notes on the Non-Painted), Rutault describes the rules for the execution of Gamme de 26 couleurs:
- On any given wall only one single sheet of paper can be shown, in white or some other colour. The sheets of paper to be used are standard in terms of format and colour.
- Either side of the sheet can be used. There is neither front nor back, top nor bottom, breadth nor length. The sheet may be mounted in any direction providing it follows the orthogonality of the wall.
Claude Rutault explains the significance of this work as follows:
- The paper is not prepared in the way canvas is, and may be of one colour or another without being painted. The relationship between the paper and the wall, and between painted and non-painted, will be determined by the use of paper of a colour different from that of the wall and which varies in accordance with a strict rule that depends on the colour of the wall.
- The work is related to the fact that the colour white is never the same: sometimes, the white of the wall, and in that case the sheet of paper will be any colour but white; sometimes, the white of the paper if the wall is not white.
- Unlike the situation with a painted canvas, the choice that defines the exact relationship between the colour of the wall and the colour of the paper is not immediately visible. The only self-evident thing is that a sheet of non-painted paper must be used.
In Gamme de 26 couleurs, the relationship between paper and wall is determined by the colour of the wall. The walls of most museums are white. This white is supposed to be neutral. But when a white work of art is shown, which is in principle the same colour as the walls, the white of the walls suddenly turns out not to be so neutral. In Rutault’s own words, “This work exposes the false neutrality of the walls.”
Claude Rutault’s oeuvre can be situated in the spirit of the Fundamental Painting of the 1970s. These painters focused on the formal and fundamental principles of abstract painting, their only purpose being research into the basic elements of the medium: dimensions, format, form, plane, line, colour, texture, material and method. The painting was stripped of all its illusion and viewed as an essentially flat plane covered with colours arranged in a particular way. Fundamental Painting refers only to itself. Any less is hardly imaginable.
