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Criteria for modernism A843 Block 2 Ex. 4.2.3

In the light of the criteria suggested, make notes on what aspects of these works gave impetus to modernist theorisation.

Criteria

·        ‘flatness’, i.e. shallow pictorial space

·        alignment of forms with the picture plane

·        echoing of the framing edge in internal forms

·        ‘all-overness’, i.e. the elision of the distinction between figure and ground

·        the reduction of ‘tangible’ pictorial space to purely ‘optical’ pictorial space

·        unity of effect.

Artists

·        Paul Cézanne – search particularly for his late landscapes, from late 1880s to his death

·        Georges Braque – search for Cubist still lifes, both painting and collage, from c.1908 through to c.1914

·        Piet Mondrian – search for ‘neo-plastic’ abstract paintings from c.1920–30

·        Mark Rothko – search for examples of his work after c.1948

·        Kenneth Noland – search for his ‘chevrons’ and horizontal ‘stripes’ of the 1960s.

NOTE ON ME ON BLOCK 2: I have become rather jaded by Block 2. It started off well and I liked both sections but am wary of the exercises, since they presume very much the answers revealed in Discussion. Where that was overt I miss them out. The section on Byzantine Art (by concentrating on connoisseurship of a very limited kind) was enough to put me off Byzantine Art or at least the versions of it in Art History, if this is representative. However, having read Anthony Eastmond, I have a feeling it is not and so I’m leaving that section as merely read. Onwards & upwards to here.

This exercise:

Rather than search for a picture that meets the analytic need I decided to choose the first picture for each artist I came across – by accident or unconscious determination – and go with that.

Artists

·        Paul Cézanne – search particularly for his late landscapes, from late 1880s to his death

I have ‘chosen’ View of the Bay of Marseilles with the Village of Saint-Henri’ (c. 1883) because I did not know it.

·        ‘flatness’, i.e. shallow pictorial space

One can see what is meant by those who emphasise this in Cezanne, although there is much here that appears as a classic perspectival picture with receding planes emphasised both by object shapes (the funnel chimneys) where the near (in the village?) takes much space but is perceived as small in comparison with diminished spaces representing huge factory chimneys near the bay shore. Indeed if flat it is so only because of a feel of tectonic planes divided by lateral lines representing natural features. There is not only illusion of distance but depth since the village slopes away from the eminence from which we view.

·        alignment of forms with the picture plane

As above, I do not see this

·        echoing of the framing edge in internal forms

This is certainly so in the representation of man-made objects with much purer verticals, which contrast with dynamic natural forms, even invisible ones like an east wind seen in tree curvature and smoke.

·        ‘all-overness’, i.e. the elision of the distinction between figure and ground

At the level of colour, this may be the case. Green has a flattening harmonising planar feel in the picture that contradicts the perspectival or tectonic recession seen in man-made objects. Similarly with reddish disruptions to the right.

·        the reduction of ‘tangible’ pictorial space to purely ‘optical’ pictorial space

This may be an effect of the contradiction in perception I feel above.

·        unity of effect.

I certainly feel more a pull to fragmentation than unity – partly as an effect of blocks of colour and contrasts of straight and less straight laterals & vertical lines.

 

·        Georges Braque – search for Cubist still lifes, both painting and collage, from c.1908 through to c.1914

I have chosen ‘The Table (Still Life with Fan)’ (1910)

• ‘flatness’, i.e. shallow pictorial space

My sense of this is far more than of flatness, but rather of recession and projection – the threatening knife like object which may be the perceived shape of the fan bone, which seeks its viewer as victim. Moreover I am prompted to see depth rather than irregular geometry in the table and the effect of the closed table door, promising depth behind it. It isn’t tectonic in the same way as Cezanne is (in part) because there is a sense of angularity in the geometric shapes which take perception on a trip to the sides of the object. I didn’t know it but I love this painting.

• alignment of forms with the picture plane

There is too much balanced recession, which seems to cut into the picture laterally with the upper part of the picture looming forward from that depth so that the top of the picture is impossibly higher and further forward from the picture plane, The geometric shapes on the right may be at the level of the picture plane. They disturb but seeking objectification. I have the same felling of fragmentation.

• echoing of the framing edge in internal forms

There may be an attempt to do that (at a deep tilt) in the table but it is constantly disrupted by intersecting geometric forms.

• ‘all-overness’, i.e. the elision of the distinction between figure and ground

Instead of harmonising the ochre colours are disrupted by what feel like violent yellows. Perhaps the dissolution of the background to the Table (where is floor, where is wall, helps create this partial effect of all-overness where objects begin to dissolve into the plane.

• the reduction of ‘tangible’ pictorial space to purely ‘optical’ pictorial space]

I find this. If anything the tangibility of space is increased and becomes more visible by the disruptions of the prompts to consistent pictorial (or represented) space.

• unity of effect.

I do not find anything that matches this.

 

·        Piet Mondrian – search for ‘neo-plastic’ abstract paintings from c.1920–30

I have chosen ‘Lozenge Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow', 1925

• ‘flatness’, i.e. shallow pictorial space

This painting has really challenged me because its use of shape is not like that stereotypical image I had of Mondrian which uses the picture frame as part of its internal structure. The illusion of tilt and depth in the lozenge in relation to the overall marginal and shaping shading of the background in this painting disturbs, so that I have a sense of curved surfaces, depth and projection from within that depth. The shapes seem potentially partial rather than fulfilled ones – that triangle to the right is surely part of another unseen figure, perhaps a square that that lozenge lifts out of an imagined background,

• alignment of forms with the picture plane
• echoing of the framing edge in internal forms

I find it difficult to find any of these, as suggested above.

There may be an attempt to do that (at a deep tilt) in the table but it is constantly disrupted by intersecting geometric forms.

• ‘all-overness’, i.e. the elision of the distinction between figure and ground
• unity of effect.

The effects of colour provide this to some extent, not least how shading effects might mimic proximity of colour band effects – black, white, blue, greys.

·        Mark Rothko – search for examples of his work after c.1948

‘I have chosen ‘Number 18’ (1951)

• ‘flatness’, i.e. shallow pictorial space

This painting has an emotional effect that is far from flat or to do with surfaces, partly because the disruptive lines, with their jagged edges give both a sense of violence and depth – like a cut or wound that seems to bleed or to seep (even worse). There is a liminality to all the framing that exceeds even the actual edges of the picture.

• alignment of forms with the picture plane
• echoing of the framing edge in internal forms

Again I need these together because they are absolutely crucially interconnected. Reductively speaking the frame ‘gives’ all the other ‘edges’ shape, whilst being itself compromised by their liminal effects and hurting depths. The transformation into shading of colours is beautiful, but disturbing & fragmenting to me. Forms are clearly not aligned to one plane for all of those reasons.

·        ‘all-overness’, i.e. the elision of the distinction between figure and ground

·        the reduction of ‘tangible’ pictorial space to purely ‘optical’ pictorial space]

Instead of harmonising the pinks, reds & purples feel like disruptions as well as transitions, especially the pink that traces the picture edge. This partial effect of all-overness where objects begin to dissolve into the plane.

·        unity of effect.

Unity is not the effect, rather liminal and unbounded space (not infinity, just overwhelming larger than itself.

 

·        Kenneth Noland – search for his ‘chevrons’ and horizontal ‘stripes’ of the 1960s.

I have chosen Red Divide Date 1965

•  ‘flatness’, i.e. shallow pictorial space

The title may influence but I see planar ridges here together with incompleteness in shapes of varying depth. Shallowness may not happen because of what is felt as the incompletion of the red triangle, which feels logically partial but ‘divides’ because it may be forcibly truncated.

• alignment of forms with the picture plane
• echoing of the framing edge in internal forms

Too disrupted by diagonals to reinforce the rectangular frame or to hold shapes at the surface.

• ‘all-overness’, i.e. the elision of the distinction between figure and ground

Well, yes. There is no figure, no background.

• the reduction of ‘tangible’ pictorial space to purely ‘optical’ pictorial space]

I can’t think about this one. L

·        unity of effect.

Unity is not the effect, rather spatial contradiction within an apparent and limitless potential continuity.

 Well that’s me.

Let’s see what I should have said.

 Steve