Page 35 - Studio International - February 1974

colour or that', as I put it in that same 1962 them, of course. Throughout 1963 and 1964 the imagine I can put my finger on two related
statement. nature of these divisions, in terms of shape, was characteristics or obsessions. First, I have given
1963, then, was the moment when the linear that they were rectilinear and circular: lop-sided my hand (indeed, the whole of my arm) a free
reappeared in my painting. But what does discs and wobbly squares and rectangles rein in the drawing of the wobbly hard-edge
linear mean in my case ? No lines as such interpenetrating, rather like a Nicholson whose frontiers; and these have got further and
survive in a finished painting of mine. By linear rigidity was dissolving: Blue in Black, White in further away from the underlying or implied
I'm referring to that network or grid of frontiers Yellow: June 1964 is a typical gouache of this regularity of the rectilinear plus the circular
which divide the colour-areas throughout the phase. Unlike Ben Nicholson, I have never in configuration of 1963. And incidentally, once
picture surface. A line, in my paintings of 1963 my life drawn a straight line or a purely I'm screwed up to making the attack, I usually
and onwards, has no individual existence : it is circular circle or disc. To my eye, at least, an draw in the entire scheme for a thirteen-foot
simply the mutually definitive divide absolutely straight line or colour-edge, or a pure canvas in a matter of a few seconds only. And
separating two adjacent colour-areas. In an arc or circle, both seem destructive of the secondly, I find myself searching endlessly for
essay on Braque,6 in 1946, I said 'Every line flatness of the picture-surface : both seem to me new relational proportions as between colours
operating within the strict economy of this to rise up off it, or to sink back too deeply into or colour-areas. For instance, in 1969 I arrived
design defines in at least two directions it - a fact which the logic of Nicholson's own at a series of very large paintings - fifteen feet
simultaneously, describing and terminating shallow reliefs perhaps bears out ? I've long, or thirteen or eleven feet - Cadmium with
whatever lies to the right and the left of it. The certainly come to feel that such unity of the Violet, Scarlet, Emerald, Lemon and Venetian:
reading which is momentarily the strongest will total picture-surface as I may arrive at is 1969 is an example. Looking back, the object
be the one relevant to the side from which our somehow dependent upon the wobbliness and here seems to have been to see how far a few
eye approaches'. Although I said this of irregularity of the drawing of all the frontiers of the familiar elements could be stretched out
Braque, it is my profound belief that this equal separating my colour-areas. If one looks at the sideways, into this long horizontal composition
two-way definition of all dividing lines, all irregular discs in Yellows and Reds with Violet (and there's a word, 'composition', we needn't
pronounced divisions between forms or colours, Edge: April 1965 it seems to me that it's run away from), without that largest area of
is characteristic of the best painting of any age. possible to feel that while the colour of each cadmium-red disintegrating back into that
The so-called space between the arm and the operates quite violently, in a spatial sense, vacuous background of neutral nothingness
hip in a nude by Michaelangelo is itself a shape, pulling them out and pushing them back a which I so much despise ! I used to say, as far
on the picture-surface, every bit as definite and matter of feet, it would seem that what finally back as 1959, that what one was looking for, in
positive and complete as the shape of the arm or ties them down into a much tighter spatial stretching out a single colour-plane across four-
the torso to either side of it. In other words, the relationship with each other, and with the other fifths of a canvas, was a full emptiness or an
outline of that hip is a line which defines with shapes, is the uneven nature of their outlines or empty fullness. In these very long, very large
equal intensity in two directions simultaneously. edges. The 'wobbly hard-edge' which is a paintings of 1969 and after, I think one has
All paintings are thus like a jigsaw: every area- feature of all my work since 1965 has itself added to that earlier requirement of 'full
shape - like the pieces in a jigsaw - must be become the source, or vehicle I should perhaps emptiness' this new one : to see how big a
formally complete in itself and at the same time say, of what still looks to me to be a limitless colour-area can become physically while still
must be wholly accommodating to all the other variety of spatial ambiguities or mysteries. Most retaining a visible compactness in its image, a
contingent pieces surrounding it. All its edges obvious of these spatial ambiguities or tightness in its design and organization that
mutually define both the piece itself and one contradictions are those cases where the remains totally readable, despite the expanded
side of an adjacent piece. But when your eye `drawing' of the outline of a colour-area implies scale of that design, of those images. How far
is fixed on one piece, you read that piece's recession but its colour generates the opposite could one expand one's colour-areas without
outlines, or frontiers, as defining that piece only. sensation of something protruding - or vice appearing to be distending any or all of them ?
The moment your eye crosses over into the next versa. For instance, there is a small wafer of I have painted a version of this thirteen-foot
piece - the frontier line you have just crossed Chinese vermilion, in the middle left of this Cadmium with Violet, with the same colours but
becomes readable in reverse. This is what I painting, the outlines of which suggest that it is on a format only nine inches long. One of the
meant by Braque's lines defining areas in two neatly tucked in behind the deep violet area, mysteries of scale which seeing the two versions
directions simultaneously. where it encloses the pale lemon disc. Yet the together would demonstrate is to do with what I
In this account of my pursuit of the shape or red of that vermilion brings this wafer towards call the physicality of mere size: the plain
shapes of colour I've just referred to the arrival us, in front of the violet edge. The spatial physical impact of a large painting, the sheerly
of the linear in my canvases. But I'm getting evocation of the colour, and the spatial quantitative bombardment by the vibrations of
this back-to-front - it's another distortion of a evocation of the outlines or edges, are thus at really big areas of colour - these constitute a
complex visual situation due to the fact that it is odds at this point. totally new factor. It was simply a fact that, in
in words that I'm attempting to account for it. Incidentally, when this picture was first painting large, one was entering a field of
The truth is, this linear grid which re-entered exhibited in New York, in 1965, it was attacked physical sensation which just was not given off
my works in 1963 was not sought or looked for by a well-known critic as representing 'a retreat by smaller paintings.
by me for its own sake. On the contrary, it was to Cubism' ! In particular, it was attacked for its It used to be felt that two adjacent areas of
the inevitable by-product of the achievement of `overlapping forms'. Obviously, in 1965, its mere flat but differing colours - say a red or a blue -
two other conditions - both new - in my pursuit complexity was incomprehensible: although in would always take up a fixed spatial position in
of yet stronger and more intense sensations of the same show I included Dark Purple and relation to one another along the line dividing
colour. These were a hardening and sharpening Ceruleum: May 1965 which was less complex. them. It used to be said that the red would
of the actual frontiers between colour-areas; and But colour-areas are not forms. There is no always appear to come in front of the blue. My
a desire to deprive that dominant 'ground' area residual hint or vestige of the solidity of real own experience suggests that this is quite
of its monopoly of all the canvas's edges, by objects in my colour-areas - as there always is untrue. When your eye alights on the sharp
allowing many of the smaller areas to flow in Cubist planes of colour. Indeed, the space- linear frontier separating two colour-areas,
outwards, so that they too occupied whole creating power of these colour-areas exists your sensation that one of those colours is
lengths of the picture's edge. To describe this precisely because they are totally nonfigurative. `nearer' to you than the other - this sensation,
the wrong way - I could say I began to divide In attempting, now, to sum up the direction this conviction that space-in-depth separates
up the ground, with the divisions now running my work has taken since painting canvases like the two colour-areas, is overwhelmingly definite
to the four sides of the canvas and making use of Yellow and Reds with Violet Edge: April 1965, I as a sensation. Its cause, however, is enormously
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