Page 41 - Studio International - September 1973

(Left) John Sell Cotman
Abbey Church of the Holy
Trinity at Caen from
Architectural Antiquities of Normandy
(1822)
(Below)
Detail of above

offers unusual interest from a formal and bilateral monotony of the perspectival implied light-source on the right hand and the
structural point of view. In the first place, it rendering by the incidence of luminosity. It is a illusory light-source on the left. Cotman
exemplifies what might be called an overlap of particularly fine stroke that the lancet window rescues us from this oscillation, I would suggest,
codes. The primary code is that of the upon which the perspective converges is not the by introducing a cultural or symbolic code. The
architectural order: the over-all design of the source of light — about this, more in a moment. illusory radiation of light from the left is
crypt is shown to have a complete regularity But this analysis is entirely on a formal level, interrupted by the simple occurrence
as far as the periodic distribution of pillars and and we can, I think, approach the significance of two fragmentary capitals, one the right way
vaults is concerned. But, of course, this is not of the work much more closely if we introduce up and the other inverted. Surely the slightest
precisely what we see. Cotman simply makes us the tripartite range of signs which I have reference to the context of Cotman's journey
aware of the architectural order, which would used in relation to The Complete Angler. through Normandy, to the topographical
only be fully conveyed through a series of The various formal codes which I have purpose of his record in this period of the
ground-plans and architect's drawings. He instanced are introduced within the rediscovery of 'Gothic' architecture, should alert
implies this, however, in the use of a predominantly iconic mode of representation. us to the cultural significance of these
perspectival order: our eye travels along the Their function might be described as juxtaposed capitals ? They introduce the motif
central bay to a kind of vanishing point in the `rhetorical', in the sense in which Roland of the ruin (the inverted, damaged capital) and
lancet window, and the aisles seem to fan Barthes has used the term. But Cotman is the restoration (the rehabilitated, undamaged
outwards from this point. Moreover, once this concerned, I believe, to lead us out of the purely capital), and so redirect our attention to the
has been said, it is quite clear that we need to iconic dimension. This he does in a whole of the pictorial field — not as the
refer to yet a third code — that of luminosity, particularly subtle way. The angular incidence intersection of formal codes, but as the
which issues, apparently, from a concealed of light testifies to the existence of a concealed recuperation of a cultural code.
window in the right-hand corner, and causes source of luminosity in the right-hand corner. We have, therefore, a juxtaposition and
a specific differentiation between the two sides. But at the same time, the obstruction of the identification of iconic and symbolic
Cotman's etching therefore derives part of vaults causes the light to fall upon the left-hand representation. In recollection of my earlier
its fascination from these overlapping, or wall in an angular pattern. It is almost as if reference to the 'triple register' of signs, we
interlocking codes. The image is, so to speak, there were a source of radiating light on the might well wonder if the 'indexical' element
saved from architectural uniformity by the left-hand wall, and we were therefore which I noted in The Complete Angler has any
perspectival rendering, and saved from the condemned to a kind of oscillation between the place in this particular work. The answer seems
87