julian Broadhurst
‘Tiepolo and the Rape of
Europa’
120 x 170 cm Bespoke Print on laminate
panel, framed in aluminium.
Consisting 16 Longitudinal Compressions of Giovanni
Battista Tiepolo’s
‘The
Rape of Europa’, white black colour inverted, Melded through a severe geometric
Tracery,
and
set here in grey tone - June - October 2003.
Exhibited
as a Part of the international multimedia show
‘The Rape of Europa’ at The Luke & A Gallery
4
Pollen Street, Mayfair. London W1 - 18. 12 to 20. 12. 2003.
80pp
Catalogue published by Gallery
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|
||||
.
From a severe Geometric Tracery, to the multiple images, compressed to a
series of parallel bars, this picture unites many themes in my Working life,
and represent therein a huge technical Breakthrough. Firstly I have always
loved the presentation of Multiple images, I felt they could give an added
gravity to a serious subject, Andy Warhol’s Electric Chairs, for example. Like
him I employ image enlargement, with its consequent feedback effects in
print. More like me however are My
Masters of OP Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley, with whom I share a passion
for parallel lines. These two thoughts came together when Art Critic &
Curator Megakles Rogakos of Tate Modern, invited me to develop a picture on the
theme of ‘The Rape of Europa’, for his own forthcoming exhibition of the
that name. A tall order perhaps, for a vehemently abstract Artist like my self,
working almost exclusively in Black and White, but these things have a habit of
theming themselves.
My first broach of the subject was with some Old Master prints, and in
particular, that by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo 1696 -
1770. I scanned it first it into Black and White and reformatted
it vertically. I then began a series of Longitudinal Compressions, into ever
thinner ‘Bars’, with the image deforming vertically. I laid these out on a page, four at quarter widths, eight at
eighth widths and finally with sixteen at sixteenth widths. By now the original image was obliterated
into sixteen Identical black vertical smears in column boxes. The OP Artist in me won out and I opted for
the latter. I had an interesting work but I felt I’d lost the spirit of the
brief.
My approach to the requirements of
this picture, namely that of the ‘Theme’, in abstracted, not to say Elemental
terms of pure Shape, can only be one of sensibility, since I can not depict in
the conventional sense. One sensibility of the myth Is that of struggle, which
my parallel smears, gorgeously cool and minimal as they are, do not suggest.
This then, was not the yet work I was looking for. The connection of this work
as it stood with the brief is purely semantic, you only have my word for it,
that this these bars are Tiepolo’s Rape of Europa and that is insufficient.
These developmental Pieces, together with the finished image and a series of
thematic experiments, now called ‘Twelve Tiepolo Drawings can now be seen on my
Website at www.’drowningcircle.com’ and My CDRom ‘Drowningcircle.rom’ as Thematic
Gallery 25, where the pictures, as large thumbnails, lead to a series of
enlargements.
This piece, ‘Tiepolo and the Rape of Europa’, had to be a
showcase work for me, I wanted it to be a tour de force, so it would have to be
‘sufficient’ to the sensibility of the brief. Elementalism, my syntactic
mode of construction in pure shape, is, in its pure form of Geometric Tracery
and ‘Wireframe’ Perspective, sufficient to convey turmoil, restlessness
and struggle. These conditions I deemed to express rape.
It comes down to the pre disposition of the brain to construct mental
models of what it perceives and to seek order therein. If presented with
insufficient or contradictory information, the brain will vacillate between its
conflicting models of what it thinks it can see, hence the optical illusion. OP
Art plays on the assumption that the eye can be thus fooled. One form of
optical illusion stems from the inherited notion of perspective. Like Tonality
in music it is a guide to the senses, the position of a modulation in relation
to its tonal centre, or the distance and distinction of an object in space to
its observer. Polyperspectivity is the visual equivalent of
Polytonality, music with multiple tonal centres, hence a picture deliberately
suggesting multiple perspective readings at once. Constructions using Stars
with an odd number of points, three, five, seven etc naturally cause sight
lines to present multiple readings in conventional perspective. So when you try
to take in the whole of such a presentation , it cannot be securely done, you
will always vacillate to a contrary reading.
This is both conflicting and unsettling, the then is the sensibility of
my brief.
A recent piece of mine satisfying
those criteria is my ‘Midsummer Dance No.6’, shown in on my Website as ‘Gallery 23’.
Just as an experiment I tried layering Transparencies of the ‘MSD 6’ and
the Sixteen bar ‘Tiepolo’ study [ No.4], the result was revelatory, sufficing
as a gray Black meld.
I took Midsummer Dance 6 back to my drafting table, it wasn’t
quite up to the job, rethinking its notional solidity, I created a specific
version of the tracery, now MSD 6b, the ‘ROE - Zeus’ version. I put this back
in the image producing and rejecting many degrees of opacity and gray scaling
before settling on the image I am presenting now as ‘Tiepolo and the Rape of
Europa’.
Further changes were made to the
actual colour gradients during the process of digitally scanning the piece to a
sufficient size for an industrial inkjet to print it at the John E. Wrights
Print studio in Derby - where the Laminate panel print was created. The
Aluminium frame was built by Masterframer Darren Waldron at the Friargate
Gallery in Derby.
Please now visit the exhibition of my ‘12 Tiepolo Studies’
At
Select:
‘Thematic Galleries index’,
Select:
‘Gallery 25 - The Tiepolo Studies’
Contact:
Broadhurst@drowning.freeserve.co.uk
To
avoid Spam filter Please Prefix Subject line ‘Tiepolo’
Images and Text © julian Broadhurst 2OO3