Cross Purposes

Today the opposite of tomato is the handclaps on Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ ‘The Weeping Song’ & Belle & Sebastian’s ‘Seymour Stein’ (especially the first one, where the instrumental coda kicks in)


graphite/20x30cm
original source: ‘The Times’ 19/03/08

The appeal of this photographic source image was immediate in formal terms, with its reminder to me of such images of Mondrian’s as ‘Pier & Ocean’ & ‘Composition in Line’ from the final transitional stage of his painting before his arrival at Neoplasticism, his mature & iconic style: in effect, the white crosses against a darker-toned ground could be seen as ‘negatives’ of the black forms on white grounds of the Mondrian paintings, in which it is clear to see how he was soon to be able to coalesce his ‘plus/minus’ formal language (regularized, geometricized from more sinuous, curving, organic forms) of horizontal & vertical marks, draw them out, into his characteristic grids (& thus leave a huge legacy to Modernist painting).


Piet Mondrian ‘Composition #10 in Black & White (Pier and Ocean)’
Oil on canvas/1915


Piet Mondrian ‘Composition in Line’
Oil on canvas/1917

Another link to Modernist art history is provided by the insistently vertical composition of the photo, recalling that of Braque & Picasso in their earliest Cubist paintings, developing the formal explorations made by Cezanne - all these examples in the context of the landscape - with Mondrian in turn developing his work from Cubism, making the breakthrough into a purely abstract language from which Braque & Picasso had retreated when diverting their Cubist explorations into the realm of collage, introducing fragments of the recognizably real world back into their images which, with their ‘hermetic’ Cubist work, had become almost abstract.


With the current drawing project using photographic sources as its inspiration, it’s particularly appropriate, perhaps, to be reading at present ‘Vermeer’s Camera’, Philip Steadman’s most interesting study of and exploration into the artist’s possible-probable use of the camera obscura, one of the earliest forms of ‘image making’ technology. Fascinating contents, including much historical information & reconstructions in real space of Vermeer’s compositions and a camera obscura, seeming to present compelling evidence of the artist’s use of such equipment in the making of his paintings, the evolution of his style, as, similarly, did David Hockney’s broader-ranging (in terms of artists researched) ‘Secret Knowledge’ a few years ago (wonderful book, especially the reproductions & Hockney’s correspondence with Martin Kemp, the dialogue between them as Hockney’s findings & ideas develop, & a magical TV documentary, I recall). But still the sheer beauty of the paintings, Vermeer’s touch, his miraculous representation of light, remains, whatever explanations or hypotheses may be advanced.