A Simple Line

I’ve been thinking about Robert Rauschenberg’s White Painting a lot lately. It’s an incredibly simple painting, and to me that’s a key part of its meaning.

It’s commonly believed that life changing events need to be big! Yet as this painting shows, it’s usually the small and simple choices that bring about great changes. Yet even for big events, like getting married, that’s usually one day. And if we drew a line for everyday in just a year - let alone an entire lifetime - the like for that big moment would be hard to see.

When it comes to severed people, there was a single day when they underwent a procedure that changed their lives forever.

Ans the painting has another level of symbolism. The Severance procedure splits people’s lives into two halves (or more, as we’ve seen with Gemma). And like the painting, each is similar. Yet also distinct from one another. And wt the same time, the two halves share the same canvas, or for severed persons body. Neither is entirely independent of the other.