One blank canvas (replica of oringinal blank canvas), a photographic print of the original blank canvas, and a text describing its history and its significance in the death of Modernism and the Avant-garde.

Tabula Rasa (Text)

mod-ern-ism /* n. is the ideas and methods of modern art, especially when they are contrasted with earlier ideas and methods; a technical term. EG ...that moment when modernism first discovered itself... ...American Late Modernism.
pic-ture /* n. 1 (often attrib.)painting, drawing, photograph, etc. 2 total visual or mental impression produced; scene (the picture looked bleak).* v.tr. 1 represent in a picture. 2 imagine.* n. 1 portrait, depiction, representation, illustration, sketch, photo. 2 idea, notion, understanding, image; see also SCENE 6.
a-vant-garde /* n. pioneers or innovators, esp. in art and literature.* adj. (of ideas, etc.) new; progressive. a’vant’ -gard’ism n. a’vant’ -gard’ist n.* n. vanguard, trendsetters.* adj. innovative, advanced, experimental; unconventional, eccentric, revolutionary, extreme.
read-y-made /* v.tr. 1 (esp. of clothes) made in a standard sized, not to measure. 2 already available; convenient (readymade-made excuse).* adj. 1 off-the-rack. 2 handy suitable.

the blank can-vas / a picture that was sent to the Royal Academy for selection in their Summer Show in 2001. It was refused entry, not on the basis of whether it was or was not art. Neither, on the basis of whether it was or was not a picture. It is/was a picture, just not a very successful one.
The original painting was lost (the one represented here is a replica), after retrieving the original blank canvas. The artsist lost or left the piece, on the No. 291 Bus. No one has retrieved or been aware of the whereabouts of the original blank canvas, pheraps it has been given given back its function and someone else has painted over the original.

the death of mod-ern-ism and a-vant-garde art / the blank canvas being both a pic-ture and a read-y-made, is both an example of mod-ern-ism and the a-vant-garde.* modernism. (specific) formalsim, aestheticism, the reduction of its properties. EG ...modern painting deals with its own properties, what makes it a painting, flatness, paint, colour.* avant-garde. (generic) a testing of the conventions of both art and life. An anarchic attempt to expand the boundaries of art, by destroying it. EG ...using dialectics to find loopholes in what we accept as art, using objects and images we do not associate with art. To ridicule, or to criticize.
* the death of. the blank canvas is the picture reduced to its bare minimium, it cannot be reduced any further. It is also both formal and aesthetic, as all things are. The blank canvas is the logical conclusion of mod-ern-ism, as well as being an example of the a-vant-garde. The a-vant-garde destroys mod-ern-ism with the blank canvas, but does not reconcile life and art, nor does it test either boundaries or conventions. It fails due to its continuation and repetition. Art is dead, long live Art.da-da-da