Page 41 - Studio International - February 1973

Concentric, eccentric:

notes on Carel Visser's graphic art R. H. Fuchs

Imagine a spiralling line on a sheet of paper. rivers and mountains in the distance, mist over suggested by the paper's dimensions, and the
Simple in itself, such a line can express two the horizon, and figures freely moving around. shape also controls the space of the paper
essentially different movements. Taken from Painting is first a colour-space in which figures through its size. This results in a beautifully
one end, the central one, the line is moving can be put; sculpture is first a figure which may balanced opposition of shape against ground —
outward; taken from the other end, it's moving then control some space around it. parallel to the way in which Visser's sculptures
inward. Each line has a very different effect. Michelangelo's frescoes are like that; there was confront their surrounding space instead of
The inward moving line establishes a strong almost no space, only a flat wall, before the joining it. q
form; the circle is its most perfect example. The figures were introduced, and there is virtually
outward moving line articulates the spatial nothing else but figures : accumulations of 'The occasion for this note is a beautiful retrospective
dimensions (horizontal, vertical) of the sheet of solid figures, locked in each other's grip. exhibition of Visser's sculptures, drawings and
paper; and its most perfect example is the The woodcuts of Catel Visser are clearly done woodcuts in the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, and
the appearance of a monograph by H. L. Locher
straight line. From this basic, perceptual fact by a sculptor; but in them the sculptural vision which is sold at the museum. The text is only in
one could deduce that there are two different is rather successfully adapted to the essentially Dutch, but it also contains too illustrations
ways of drawing : drawing to establish form and different, and pictorial, medium of the covering the whole range of Visser's oeuvre. For
more information, see my article in the October 1972
drawing to establish space. And if one can make woodcut.3 When starting to build a sculpture issue of Studio International.
a valid distinction between a painter's drawing (like Eight Beams, 1964), there is no given space; 20f course there is, in England and America
and a sculptor's drawing (and I think one can), there are really only parts, of certain dimensions, especially, the modernist tradition of 'pictorial'
sculpture, as defined by critics like Clement
this might be the difference. Anyway, these two which are structured. After that a sculpture may Greenberg and Michael Fried. My remarks here do
ways of drawing correspond, however roughly, give the effect of having a certain space not cover this variant of present-day sculpture.
to the classic difference between the sculptural belonging to it — its place. But a woodcut has a 3Since 1954 Visser's woodcuts have grown into a
sizeable part of his oeuvre with a high quality of its
and the pictorial procedure. It is generally given space in the dimensions of its paper. own. They are printed in one colour, mostly black,
characteristic of sculpture that it articulates its Visser builds a structure on paper with various sometimes yellow or red. Their size is normally
structural identity through oppositions of strong elements, all strong forms. The structure itself 63 x 93 cm. Though they do not stand apart from
his sculpture, in form and structure, they are not
forms, or proportionate relations between forms. also takes on a strong shape — but its size is studies for sculptures.
A painting, on the other hand, is first of all
Eight Beams 1964
(though not exclusively) a structure based on a Rijksmuseum,
subtle, and optical, interplay of spatial and Kröller-Müller, Otterlo
colouristic distances.2 Sculpture's character
shows in sculptor's drawings, somehow or other.
The drawings of great sculptors like Bernini
or Rodin or Brancusi are mostly of one figure;
if they are of groups of figures, then there is still
an emphasized identity for each singular figure.
Sometimes such a figure may be drawn in a more (Below left)
or less pictorial manner, like some of Rodin's Reflection 1957
drawings of dancing girls (with watercolour), Woodcut
Gemeentemuseum,
but even then precise contour makes the form The Hague
rather strong. And in the unique case of (Below right)
Michelangelo: his paintings are sculptural, while Pyramid 1968
he seems to fail to do what he should — Woodcut
according to contemporary theory and practice — Gemeentemuseum,
The Hague
i.e. paint the world, a colourful landscape,

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