This notion of the picture plane as an arena of evidence marks a conceptual change in modernism, a movement away from consideration of an autonomous art object to a growing focus on works or environments that bear imprint of prior activities - traces, as it were, of an unseen history. If the canvas could not truly be considered "a moment" in the adulterated mix of the artist's life, it did appear as a kind of plataform or stage on which a certain life has been lived.Ralph