Lesson 35

The window on the world

There are two sorts of painting. One contains a whole world, all of what there is and all that is necessary. The other is a section of something much bigger.

 

 

Cezanne’s Bathers where ‘everything’ is contained within the rectangle.

 

 

Francis Bacon innovated a unique and distinctive space of the interior, an equivalent space, like a large mirror. In both the Cezanne and the Bacon there is no world beyond the paintings other than the one we occupy as viewers.

 

 

 

Most ‘allover’ paintings or field paintings would come into the second category.

A Pollock or Larry Poons can be regarded as a portion of something bigger, possibly infinite, never-ending and ‘universal’.

 

 

 

On the other hand an Alan Davie is a combination of the two, where the idea is totally contained within the rectangle yet it is also a section of something much larger beyond the constraints of the rectangle. Many Mondrian paintings also seem to be sections of something much larger (though not all) and though these structures are contained compositionally in the boundaries of the rectangle, it is also implied that this painting is part of a much larger structure.

 

Lesson 35: Paint a painting that compositionally works within the format and boundary of the rectangle but is also a section of a much bigger world beyond the painting.