Pure serendipity. After setting up the blog under the title entablatures,
Roy Lichtenstein’s paintings of 1971 - 1976 are discovered: see http://trendland.com/roy-lichtenstein-entablatures/
and http://paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/507 One can only accept the find and enjoy it.
Something must be right.
How frequently does it occur? I
am thinking of a design, a completed building that has been put together from
the brief and the interrelated process of analysis, discovery and inspiration
only to discover some time after, the identical detail or theme or idea in
another, an older building never before seen?
I can recall detailing a square sliding glass window with a
traditional timber chain Venetian blind over it within a projecting brick
frame. Below this opening, and within a keyhole extension of the brick frame,
was placed a smaller square louvre opening - for more flexible ventilation
opportunities. This was in sub-tropical Brisbane. Traditional verandahs were
enclosed in these chain Venetian blinds for privacy, shades and shelter from
rain.
About a year later, while travelling in Cairns in tropical
north Queensland, I photographed a verandah on an old house. It was clad in the
old ‘Fibro’ sheeting and had openings in an identical keyhole form, complete
with chain Venetians and lower louvres. The discovery was simply astonishing.
One could only, again, accept and enjoy it. It seemed to say something about
the idea - its sense and sensibility: something was right.
Years later, after developing a pattern for a brick-paved
courtyard using a red and a cream brick in a positive - negative grid of tartan
proportions, the identical idea was later seen in France - at Versailles. There
is no sub- anything here. One can remember clearly the process of seeking out a
solution that used the grid of the building as the base reference that expanded
into the pattern after many various scribbles and setouts. It involved the
sketching/learning experimental cycle of designing where smudges and other odd
lines and errors, happenstance, make suggestions that are then worked through
in a new layering of perception and outcomes.
I recall David Sylvester’s interview with Francis Bacon.
Bacon tells how drugs are of no advantage or use in painting - in creating (and
he should know) - but that one can learn from a smear, splodge, stain or a
stroke. Such is the creative world where the mind/brain/body is alert to
opportunities - staying open and receptive to possibility: to seeing
opportunities; new futures.
The Paula Cooper Gallery in New York will present an
exhibition of works by Roy Lichtenstein from his celebrated Entablatures
series. The paintings, realized between 1971 and 1976, will be on view
from September 17 through October 22, 2011. The entablature is an
architectural element resembling a band or molding lying horizontally above the
columns of a building. Originating in the architecture of ancient Greece, the
motif was also abundantly represented in America in the early twentieth-century
Beaux-Arts and Greco-Roman revival style used for public buildings such as
museums and libraries. Despite the apparent reference to ancient Greek
architecture these works are abstract interpretation which easily trace back to
Lichtenstein’s iconic comic-style.
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