Page 40 - Studio International - November 1968
P. 40
Notes on sculpture
William Turnbull
These are excerpts from notes made between 1960 and
1966, and were not programming or a priori dogma,
but empirical conclusions from work done.
Sculpture and painting are instruments of thought (experience), not
of ideas.
Ideas are involved with ingenuity.
As instruments of thought they act as criticism of other works.
The event no longer happens in the work . . . but in the observer.
The observer's relation to the work should be subject—subject.
Figure-field ambiguity is duality of subject-object.
Everything is its opposite.
Preservation of the unity of the white canvas . . . but as a positive
experience.
Colour painting is not colourful painting . . . but colour as a means of
avoiding duality (figure-field ambiguity).
Subliminal colour is subjective . . . the observer experiences the com-
plimentaries by induction.
Colour painting (induced experience) is perceptual—not conceptual.
Perceptual painting is concerned with feed-back.
Colour and the edge of the canvas are the critical areas of painting
now.
Symmetry is a way of avoiding deductive painting (composition).
Experience must be induced . . . not explained.
Two attitudes to space:
Extension—towards objectivity.
Absorption—towards subjectivity.
The elimination of sculptural forms from painting have involved it
with another sculptural quality . . . physical scale directly related to
the observer.
The amount of colour and the format.
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