Deeper Windows On Space

Since Rome, landscape painting has offered us illusory space, a window on space contained within the rectangle. As Malraux observed, we  each have a museum of the mind and this mental catalog, this pictionary of ours helps artists recognize possibilities for building images.  From this museum of the mind we have found a variety of systems for superimposing  a design superstructure, the design of the painting on to its motif. The serpentine meander(zig zag), the circle, the triangle, and mutations of these geometric  building blocks are our standards. If  I look back to English watercolors at beginning of the 19th century I  find a variety these building blocks customized to organize the space of paintings. They are coupled to other design principles  such as, consistency, continuity and repetition.  Repetition in the form of a flawed rhyme or echo is a fundamental form for unifying  a landscape painting just as it is in the symphonic music of the period.  Let’s examine a watercolor by William Havell of 1826. The watercolorist’s method here was to use additions of gum arabic, gouaches, watercolors, graphite and scratching the paper with a blade for highlights. His design(see examples1 and 2) relies on repetition of flawed circles,  repeated triangle patterns ( some laying as flat illusions while others stand as vertical illusions),  large and smaller zig zags, and a variety of triads and rhythmic arrangements. I have outlined in red a few of the  rhyming triangles, circles, zig zags, and identified  a set of crossed logs on the road ( making an oblique “X”) which helps reinforce the flatness of the road. We are driven through flanking(framing) shapes into immeasurable distance in this watercolor.

example 1. the watercolor.

example2. the watercolor with superimposed design indications.

A century later  in 1908 on the Hudson River, George Bellows (  I recommend a retrospective of his work  now up at NYC’s Met Museum)  will retrofit the triangle as we see in this painting. He too works with a multiplicity of triangles and with multiple zig-zags woven into them to increase the sense of illusory space. (examples 3 and 4)

example 3. the painting.

example 4. the painting with a superimposed grid of zig zags and triangles. Note this is a traditional hub  and spoke design pattern.

Bellows also uses the triangular design to unify his motif in this painting of boxers. See how the three figures  make a monumental triangle and, further observe how we look through their legs, the legs of the triangle to find another story beyond.

example 5. Bellows boxers.

Centuries earlier Pinturicchio (late 1400s) was to use the new system of single point linear perspective to build his space. Observe that this system inherently uses the web and spoke design model. You see my overlaying diagonals all moving to a single vanishing point, to a point that lies between two framing(flanking) forms of architecture  (example 6). I used this system in organizing the space of Times Square.  Like Pinturicchio I have a central distant building flanked by closer buildings to help deliver the viewer directly into deep space, into the window on space.(example 7)

example 6. Pinturicchio.

example 7. My painting of Times Square.

Bellows  uses another device to get us into the window on deep space, the picture-within-picture technique( or window within window). Here a framing rectangle is reprised within the painting.  We look around the  interior rectangle of the elevated trestle and supports as well as into the rectangle to the smoky infinite atmosphere beyond. (example 8) I follow this example with a variety of my window-within-window images  and, I also use elevated trestle architecture. I am showing you the sequence of  stages the paintings have gone through to deliver a strong feeling of space. Notice that I am relying on the same organization of linear perspective diagonals as we saw in the Pinturicchio.(examples 9,10,)

example 8. Bellows window within window.

example 9. before final changes with more overt perspective grid.

example 10. after final changes.

example 11. another smaller version also a work of collaboration with Max Dunlop.

In the following examples of  my painting of “Landing At LaGuardia”  I begin without the superimposed  perspective grid (example 12) then, I conclude with the painted addition of a perspective vertex in a complementary color to the underlaying painting.(example 13)

example 12. before the grid.

example 13 after application of blue grid.

Bellows would also invert the triangle, as he observed Winslow Homer had done.  Bellows painted along the Maine coast especially on Monhegan Island. This example here shows his plain air painting with and without the triangle design indications (example 14 and 15).

example 14.

example 15. Notice the framing side forms of waves and rocks.

Finally, the question of merging the designs of the triangle with that of the circle should be examined. If I take a photo of a landscape which relies on a variety of soft triangles and a zig zag (example 16 and 17) and, then  mutate the photo in Photo Elements I can turn the entire image into a circle. I would still rely on triangles but, placed discreetly within the sky island circular center if I were to paint this image.(example 18).  My last example more overtly merges the triangle with the circle as you see in this painted distortion of Times Square.(example19)

example 16, photo.

example 17, photo with triangle design indications and zig zag.

example 18. The mutated circular version of the previous image.

example 19. My painting of Times Square with circle, spiral  and triangles.