Why is a room with a curve looked upon as designer and a room with a corner or straight sides discussed as traditional or safe? If we consider, once again, space to be a place where imagination resides then we can start to answer the question through the mental pictures that form. In my minds eye a corner is where a child plays alone or where a warrior makes his last stand. It is a place for intimate self to reside or for the cornered to make his last stand with sides protected and only a forward advance to defend. The corner then is a space for one or, in an outward stance, limited to one on one interaction.
The curve of course is a different space all together. In the curve I imagine the flow of water. People moving across the space interacting with all they meet. I can see both corner and curve as people at a party. The corner is a shy person who can only handle one on one conversation. The curve of course is mingling, conversing with as many as three or four people at one time. The curve is open and inviting, a friend to all.
When visiting the Guggenheim in NY you are met with some of the greatest art in the world but you are also welcomed by the curve, The entire structure is a spiralling interior seashell. You follow the curve all the way up through the exhibition. Like the curve at the party you are made welcome. You flow from painting to painting, guest to guest. You mingle and begin to see relationships between each work. Not one painting stands alone but is in conversation with each of the others. It is a wonderful experience, a great night out...but the next day I wonder, did I actually meet any of those paintings?
The Prado in Spain is a different experience all together. Traditional square rooms with flat walls. In this space I stop often. I sit in the middle of each room and meet each painting one on one. The straight side might be traditional but it is also strong. This party guest doesn't mingle. He invites conversation with many but meets each eye to eye. The next day I come back and continue our conversation.
Of course where is the corner in this 'gallery' example of space. I have never seen a painting in a corner! This makes sense of course, why would art ever want to defend itself? why would art ever want to hide? why would art ever want be alone? Art should never be in the corner.
The artist in his work though is a different story. Every time I was confronted by a painting that met me and moved me, Picasso's Guernica or Woman Ironing, Goya's Saturn eating his Son or Diego Rivera's Girl with White Lilies, the reaction has always been the same. I always wanted to go home. I wanted to go back to NZ, back to my imagined childhood corner. In this space I imagine being alone, safe in my own world, it is here that I can create my art which might one day find it's way out of the corner to rejoin the party.
No comments:
Post a Comment