Lucio Fontana Spatial Concept-Waiting (59 T 104) 1959 Oil on canvas with incisions 49 1/4 x 39 9/16 in. (125 x 100.5 cm) Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris Space is inscribed literally in Lucio Fontana's Tagli (Cuts); these works call attention to the physical reality of the painted canvas, undermining illusionism. The artist also saw them as conceptually unending, however, regarding the slashes as a way of looking beyond the painted surface to an ideal of boundless space. The cuts are a violation of a form (painting) often considered precious, but they also have a softer, sensual side. In Spatial Concept—Waiting, the pink canvas suggests flesh, hinting at the erotic underpinning of Fontana's enterprise. He made these works by cutting into a painted but still damp canvas. Once the canvas was dry, he completed the work by gently opening the cut with his hand, a gesture that has been described as a "caress." Fontana began the Tagli, which became his signature series, in 1958, when he was fifty-nine years old.