PROVENANCE Original label from exhibition Contemporary Painting in New Zealand, Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, Commonwealth Institute London 6 August - 29 August 1965 affixed verso

Insofar as it is emblematic of Milan Mrkusich's forays into modernism in the early 1960s, Emblem X is aptly named. Herein, Mrkusich has realised an abstract manifesto which integrates a number of philosophical and Jungian-inspired concerns. As viewers and appreciators of Mrkusich's art, it is impossible to comprehend the complexity and significance of the work in its entirety: the best we can therefore do is allow ourselves to be absorbed, and, in a sense, lose ourselves within this painting

Emblem X was accomplished in 1963, just one year after Mrkusich had started to introduce a heavily-geometric focus into his work, and engage with the expressive and aesthetically lyrical potential of geometric forms. The concentricity and compelling magnetism of the circular form dominates the work; as a recurring motif, it references the totality and metaphysical weight of the "mandala" symbol

Whilst it is tempting to assign overt art historical influence based on the aesthetic similarities between a work such as Emblem X and the reductionist aesthetic of Mrkusich's forbearing European expressionists (think Wassily Kandinsky), or even the gradual breakdown of form by Cubists earlier in the century, it is important to realise that in executing this work, Mrkusich was starting from a point of disconnect and pure abstraction. Emblem X is therefore not the product of a process of deconstruction wherein reality and known forms have been gradually distorted and abstracted, as was the case for earlier abstractionists; rather, it represents the non-referential articulation of the artist's philosophical and minimalist ideologies. Building upon his earlier Abstract Expressionist colour fields, Mrkusich has created a work which enrichened the language of modernism through offering an intersectional exploration into expressionist and gestural abstraction