Page 42 - Studio International - September 1973

Malcolm Hughes
4 Thematic Drawings: fig. B 1973

to me to be unequivocal, though it refers to a as with the expressive linear patterning in the introduced temporarily. Cotman's etching
technical usage which may appear to be purely work of Van Gogh. It simply supplies an therefore conveys the strange sense of a light
conventional. The entire surface of Cotman's indexical dimension, which coexists with the that is conquering the circumambient darkness —
etching is broken up into densely packed linear iconic and symbolic dimensions. However, this with the darkness representing the natural state
motifs which establish the form and above all does not exhaust the interest of Cotman's work. of things — rather than the light which is in its
the light incidence of the represented scene. In order to expand and identify our sense of this proper place, so to speak, as in all spaces above
The linear motifs have, at the same time, a fascinating engraving, we must surely entertain the ground. But, of course, Cotman's etching
characteristic patterning which does not serve Gaston Bachelard's plea for an attempt to grasp does not represent a cellar but a crypt. In other
the iconic purpose: they are, as we might term the 'specific reality' of the image. This, I believe, words, in addition to the connotations of
it, 'whorls' or parallel twisting lines which hold we may do by following some of the indications obscurity, labyrinthine space and 'walls which
a kind of internal vitality or momentum. which Bachelard provides in his study, La have all the earth against them' (p. 37), we
Cotman has, in other words, supplied a kind of poetique de l'espace, which considers a wide range have the religious connotations : the crypt as,
characteristic facture which draws attention to of literary material under chapter headings like : most often, the most ancient part of the church,
the actual process of etching: the `La Maison. De la cave au greasier'; 'Maison et the guardian of its 'obscure being' (p. 35).
discontinuities, as well as the individual univers' ; 'La Dialectique du Dehors et du I have devoted a certain amount of space to
impulses, which establish the over-all texture, Dedans'. He writes (p. 36): 'In our civilization Cotman's etching in order to show the kind of
are the result of a working process which is in no which puts the same light everywhere, which progression through levels of interpretation
way concealed. Indeed one could go so far as to puts electricity in the cellar, people no longer go which is indicated by certain semiological (and
suggest that the patterning of whorls is a to the cellar with a candle in their hand. The phenomenological) concepts. At the same time,
flattened projection of the print of the finger unconscious does not become civilized. It takes a I would not wish to give the impression that
pressing on to the engraving tool. The candle to go down into the cellar'. this is a unilinear process — much less a progress
indexical dimension is therefore acutely present. The oblique reference perhaps helps to from the inessential to the 'essence'. The critical
We are, therefore, still within that province of explain the particular effect of the light in itinerary passes as a matter of necessity through
the harmonious register of signs that I described Cotman's engraving. It is, as it were, avowed levels which are conceptually distinct, yet
as characteristic of the seventeenth century. The and =avowed, absent and present, precisely functionally interrelated. This must also be
linear energy is not to be thought of as because the fascination of the cellar is to be borne in mind in the passage which follows,
conveying an emotive tone, or a subjective state, deprived of light, except when light is when I analyse in parallel terms a work by the
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