Page 38 - Studio International - December1996

Rotation 1966
Oil on canvas
60 x 60 in.
Photo: John Webb

but a clear-cut roomy design. One explores the maze peremptory over-and-under of the earlier work gives way
and then recognizes the structural process that makes the to a far richer space: here the picture surface is more than
maze what it is. And at that point, a new experience of a passive background against which a path is laid out.
movement presents itself, for as with certain Figure and The whole canvas is engaged as we try to learn the maze.
Field problems where one's attention can only alternate In the third picture of the series the lines undergo changes
between readings which contradict each other, now one of colour and thickness according to an arbitrary rule.
must choose between the linear path and the structure: This has the effect of isolating certain quirks and accents
one cannot see both at the same time. It is possible that in the lines, removing them from the flow of the path and
it was with this experience in mind that the series of giving them the status of separate signs. Here the path is
Tangle paintings was launched. The first, the Arts Coun- almost impossible to follow as a linear journey.
cil picture, is a deadpan marathon. One is lead up and Each work raises in an extreme and mysterious form the
down the channel between the lines inexorably. Where familiar question of the relation of the parts to the whole.
the paths cross, the passage over or under is signalled Nothing that I have described so far comes to grips with
with a snap, a tiny jump in the line that gives impetus to what the works look like, any more than an account of a
its instructions. It is a restless, tormenting picture. One walk up one of the spiral staircases of the Eiffel Tower
can only go along the line, which is strenuous, or stand conveys the impression one has of it from the Pont d'Iena.
back and view it as a shape at a distance where the signals Although it is possible to alternate one's view of these
cannot quite be read. The Stuyvesant Blue Tangle allows works, from probing and unravelling them to taking them
the path to stretch and contract to the extent that there in as a whole, the one view does not lead inevitably to
is recurrent doubt between path and background. The the other. Nor does one view even help in elucidating the