Expanded Cinema II: The Ultimate Painting

Richard Kallweit
The Ultimate Painting, 1966.
Photographic documentation of a collaborative work between Clark Richert, Richard Kallweit, JoAnn Bernofsky, Gene Bernofsky and Charles DiJulio.
Courtesy the artist.

The original members of the Drop City commune established near Trinidad, Colorado, collaboratively produced The Ultimate Painting in an improvisational manner. Conceived in 1966, just as light shows were emerging as a popular art form, The Ultimate Painting was made to spin during multi-media shows in Drop City’s Theater Dome.
Organized according to a five-pointed geodesic framework, the geometric structure that inspired the Drop City cosmology, the painting reveals different patterns under various frequencies of a strobe light.

Created by Clark Richert, Richard Kallweit, Gene Bernofsky, JoAnn Bernofsky, and Charles DiJulio, The Ultimate Painting was last displayed in winter 1968/69 as part of an Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, organized by engineer Billy Klüver and artist Robert Rauschenberg. Having found its place both within the New York art world and the counterculture imagination, the painting was lost after its exhibition in Brooklyn and never recovered.

For West of Center, artist Clark Richert recreated the lost painting based on a high-resolution photograph.
 

Clark Richert
The Ultimate Painting (based on a collaborative work between Clark Richert, Richard Kallweit, JoAnn Bernofsky, Gene Bernofsky and Charles DiJulio, 1966), 2011.
Image taken at Clark Richert's studio in the lead up to West of Center.