Pointlessism by Alan Dedman, celebrates purposelessness in fine art practice, referencing the Post-Impressionist style known as Pointillism, but this artwork goes into the macro aspect of optical phenomena.
Dedman’s painting elevates the joy of colour away from pedestrian representation. Here chroma is iterated in sixteen inch blocks carefully selected; painted on stretched canvas. Apparently random choices are set against one another in a two dimensional Rubik’s cube, avoiding Mondrian’s limited grids and proscription of green.
At GYCAD Derek Mace (pictured below), made an effort to teach students the rudiments of theory, largely based on Itten’s ‘The Elements of Color (colour)’ but this wasn’t taken much further than a series of exercises. Theory wasn’t put into practice.
At two of the World’s renowned establishments, students tolerated a paucity of teaching/learning about the subject (colour).
At St. Martins, Eric Luke RAS mentioned the topic – however, this turned out to be more conceptual than actual. Neil Onslow demonstrated colour printing for photography. Otherwise, it was a matter of guesswork and assumption.
At the Royal Academy Schools (RAS), Peter Greenham RA commented skies ‘could be represented with tints of Cobalt blue’ and Roderic Barrett gave a micro lecture on the virtues of Raw and Burnt Umber. Other than that, colour was a matter of guesswork, assumption and what you bothered to teach yourself. One student spent ages drawing a horse’s arse, using coloured pencils! Ooo-er! (at least he was trying).
At the RAS Alan Dedman studied Chevreux’s original manuscripts from the Royal Academy library; he also studied Itten, Albers and others such as Munsell, Newton and Goethe.
Gaining knowledge of theory is one thing, putting it into practice is another. Including the topic in art school curricula is clearly a headache, probably because colour is complex, highly subjective and therefore a potential minefield. Better stick with drawing eh?
Pointlessism imparts the joy of chroma to a space. Vibrant colours were chosen, mixed and applied slowly, over a long period. There is no logic to the process. It is entirely subjective, however by positing each sensation in a ‘pigeon hole’ there is a semblance of purpose, control and geometric precision (it is not easy to cajole brushfuls of gloop into linear boundaries). For the aesthetically naive: yes this has ‘been done before’, but not like this.
In a geometric sense, a square has four congruent edges and four vertices; the interior and exterior angle of each corner is 90 degrees, the sum of the interior angles is 360 degrees. The diagonals are equal, bisect each other at 90°, and bisect the corners into 45° angles, creating four congruent triangles within.
Representative of the material world, squares abound in many cultures: for Christians it can mean ‘the end times’, whereas Buddhists accord it the four sacred truths. For Hindus, squares represent heaven and marriage. In psychological terms squares can symbolise stability, strength, order, trust and groundedness.
The checkerboard effect of Pointlessism has a physical presence. Colour resonates. This rectilinear artwork, 112 x 64 inches, consists of twenty eight coloured squares. Each unit has subtle, hard to determine differences in surface and texture.
Individual squares are ‘not to be sold separately’, therefore the original artwork (acrylic and emulsion on canvas) is available at £28,000.00. If you are interested in purchasing Pointlessism, please leave your details on the contact form below this post.
A photo-print mounted on foam board, 20 x 11.5 inches will be on show in ‘This Year’s Model ’26, part 1’, at studio1.1gallery from the 8th of January to the 6th of February 2026, price £75.00
Alan Dedman has utilised Pointlessism in a tableaux for satirical videos featuring the fictitious artist David Cockney.
Photos by: Nick Ward, Julian Wakeling and Alan Dedman