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julian Broadhurst Drowningcircle
Contemporary Fine Art.
170a Allestree Lane Allestree, Derby. DE22 2JX. T. / F. 01332 - 550 502 Broadhurst@drowning.freeserve.co.uk Ms Claire Halon, Cathedral House, Mount Pleasant, Liverpool.
Dear Claire, The following is to accompany the enclosed
1:8th scale copy the picture I will be delivering as gift of to
the Cathedral, sometime early in the New Year, as promised, that day in
September when I visited you in your office, It have now completed insofar as
it’s actual design. That means, in terms of my Working Practice, that I have
a finished a quarter Scale Drawing of the Piece which consists in two panels. I have taken my
drawings to the professional Art printers, John E. Wrights Ld of Derby, where
they will produce the two finished Panels to my specification.
Basically the two Drawings I produced will be enlarged and transferred
to a ‘mat’ from which a single Print will be made on to thick high quality
paper. This is the first stage of Manufacture. The second stage is to take
the two prints and mechanically bond them to separate 3mm thick
‘Flexiboard’ panels for strength. To
secure the surface it is sealed with discreet matt laminate. layer.
The picture itself is called Eight Crucifixions and is number 8
and probably the last in my series Sacred Circles. Do you recall my
describing to you some pictures based on the Geometry of the Cathedral itself
? Sacred Circles is that series and the Sacred Circles in question are those
of the Cathedral itself.
In the first part of The Sacred Circles Series, numbers 1 – 4 or ‘Set
A’, I worked with Transparencies of the Cathedrals groundplan layering them
to produce a slight interference pattern and printing from that. Then I set
combinations of these prints on a page Putting, two up two down, in alternate
upside Downside directions, making Sacred Circles Four. In
the second part of the Sacred Circles Series, numbers 5 – 8 or ‘Set B’, I
began to add a Geometric Tracery
to the initial image and Then to the combinations of the images. I am
responding as a Contemporary Artist to the Ancient notion of Sacred
Geometry upon which all of our
Ancient churches are apparently built. I pass no comment on the truth of
these notions or of their symbolic tenets. My Art is of purely Geometric
invention considerable only in aesthetic terms. So
what are to be these aesthetic terms in the Work I am preparing for you
? I say that it should be harmonic,
in balance and of interest the eye at three levels. At the highest level as a Work conceived in itself, not merely
the collection of it’s constituent parts. Secondly that the two panels,
though they will be placed together as haves of a whole, should be
considerable in themselves and in relation to each other. I
turn now to a consideration of the Eight Constituent Groups the Eight
Crucifixions of the title. They are a set of eight Closely worked Formal
Variations, in two distinct groups, one group of 4 per panel. This will
account for the two subsections of the whole work being ‘considerable in
themselves and the two being considerable between themselves as well as
together as the whole ‘single’ Work. If you think of it in terms of a piece
of music, in two separate Movements that run together. They could be heard
separately and compared to each other but you know that they are only one
Work. A good many larger pieces of music, or their movements are made up of
sets of variations. So my 2 panels consist of 2 groups of 4 = 8 variations. In
Musical Variations a theme, a set of Musical Elements, is varied from one
piece to the next. Geometrically the principle is the same, the given notes,
intervals etc translating as given shapes and their possible relations of
size and position in respect to oneanother.
The individual geometric Forms, the Star, the Square, the pentagon,
the circle I call Elements, Geometric Elements, thus my branch of
Geometric Art is then Elementalism. Thematic or Formal Variation is a
technique I have often employed in the development of Related Sets of
Pictures. My 7 Liverpool Pictures that I exhibited in this years Liverpool
Biennale were conceived in that way. Another example is my set from 1999,
the 12 picture series ‘I Contemplate’. These were broad expansive
projects where inventive techniques could take me conceptually along way from
my ‘given’ theme. In these Eight Crucifixions I deliberately placed sweeping
restrictions on what and then how I could vary the given elements.
For each panel I began with a copy of my Sacred Circles 4 [
described above. I went on to
inscribe a Geometric Group or Tracery in each of the above described
Cathedral plans, using a very tight set of Formal rules to govern the
position size etc of each Element. Hence these can be said to be Formal
Variations. I
Drew the right panel first, so the left panel had both to react to it and
follow on consistently from it making the search for each compositional
solution harder than the last.
The phrase Eight Crucifixions came to me out of the air, I
spent allot of time just thinking about what that could mean. I knew in my
mind it had something to do with 5 pointed stars, a very familiar
compositional device in my recent work. A cross is a simple and natural
Geometric figure and I found you could easily create one from a star. When a 5 pointed Star stands with one thorn pointing directly upwards it projects to further points left and right giving a straight line parallel with the edge of the paper. If we rule this line across the shape and then Rule another vertically to bisect the Star from its tip we have the figure of the cross. This compound figure is the basic unifying theme for the whole work. I wanted to present to you a work entirely in keeping with my constructive Geometric Style but which could contain a possible significance in the context of a Cathedral. What I have created I would like to believe has a contemplative religious content. The French Composer Olivier Messiaen wrote a suite for piano called ’Vingt regards sur I’enfant-jesus’ - ‘Twenty looks at the infant Jesus’, I felt the pull of this title keenly in naming my own Work Eight Crucifixions. I am asking the viewer to make repeated contemplations of the Crucifixion.
When we met I explained to you the reasons for my making this gift.
That When I had first seen the Cathedral on the 1st of May
1984 it had changed my life by
confirming in me the vision of Modern Art that is my life’s work. If
any one thing shone out even above the glories of the rest it was ‘The Chapel
of the Blessed Sacrament’ by Ceri Richards. In particular it was his
Altar piece that confirmed in me the belief that a Geometric Art of Pure line
was both possible and Capable of Great beauty. That is why I call my Work an
Altar piece in homage to a Master. I
have to arrange some sponsorship funding to complete and transport the work
to you some friends at the Liverpool Biennale are going to help me research
this. Please understand my work entirely a Gift to the Cathedral, nor shall I
take a penny for myself in making it. The project is payment itself. The purity
of the Act is much a part of the Work. This will be my greatest Work to date,
I look forward to it all very Much.
Please have a wonderful Christmas at the Cathedral and we will speak
again and make all the necessary arrangements in the New Year. Julian Broadhurst, Derby 16. 12. 02 |