This
page makes use of an innovation of mine called 'dual-purpose text.' Click
anywhere in the text below (not in the white space around the text) to get
to the top of the page very quickly and easily - there's no need to find a
separate top button or to scroll. The page on Web design describes this innovation
and others, including 'the rail,' which can also be used to reach page-top.
Text links, to reach different sections of this long page, are shown as
underlined in the list below, but not in colour.
Tensile
Art
Frames
Windows
Ground and Field
Stage Set
Interpretation
Complete/in progress
Tensile art
I see a need for artistic forms which show
tension, in the distinctive sense described in the General
Glossary and which show 'maximalism,' (the term in this case is not my own.)
Maximalism is obviously contrasted with 'minimalism,' one of the artistic
movements of the past century. When we use tension as a technique, we attempt
to do justice to reality as completely as we can, 'reality' to be taken in
the most inclusive sense possible, and to avoid partial forms.
We inevitably discover paradox, contradiction: strong contrast. If asked what
are the characteristic visual images of the past century, one person may mention
images which convey the strong, clean lines of twentieth century design which
began with the Bauhaus, another the mass executions and exterminations that
disfigured the century, another may mention scientific and technological sophistication,
another images of poverty which coexisted with unprecedented wealth - images
of poverty and consumerism. To attempt to do justice to different interpretations,
different aspects, different versions of reality requires visual forms which
are strong but sophisticated,: showing, in other words, contrast and tension.
Contrasts are immensely varied in kind but also in degree. There are very
strong, completely opposed contrasts and very subtle, playful, 'harmonious
contrasts.' Tensile art should show 'contrasts of contrast.'
In fact, to do justice to this variety
is obviously impossible, but 'more impossible' in one work than in a series
of linked works. So, I have devised 'The Set' as a tentative response to these
insights. The Set is just one example of Tensile Art and very many of the
comments I make about the Set are relevant to the much wider - and more important
- theme of 'Tensile Art.' Without any doubt, the distinctive techniques
and viewpoint I discuss here are transferable.
After so many artistic movements and
their artistic manifestoes, cubism, expressionism, abstract expressionism,
surrealism, orphism, futurism, constructivism, fauvism, De Stijl and the rest,
there is a need for a movement which is not eclectic - a loose combination
of disparate elements and influences - but which holds different elements
in tension. The 'movements' of twentieth century visual
art have been overwhelmingly impressive in their boldness and adventurousness
and very rich in achievement, but inevitably, in the best possible sense,
'one-sided.' There is no necessary linkage between 'multiple-sidedness in
a state of tension,' which is an ugly description of tensile art, and artistic
success, and no necessary linkage between 'one-sidedness' and artistic limitation,
let alone artistic failure.
The Set, then, is a composite art form
in which works of art are placed on a wall (or part of a wall or more than
one wall) of a gallery or other space so as to establish linkages and contrasts
between them. This is a two-dimensional Set. Three-dimensional Sets may include
sculpture, found objects and other three-dimensional objects but to supplement
two-dimensional structures, not to replace them. The Set has as much potential
as the installation as an art form, I believe. A three-dimensional Set may
resemble an installation to a small extent but, like the two-dimensional Set,
it makes use of new and distinctive techniques which have a systematic basis.
Like the installation, the Set will very often be large-scale, but very small
Sets are also possible.
Although Sets have linkages with many
other fields, the linkage between the Set and theatre sets is an important
one (I distinguish them by capitalizing the Set which is the subject here.)
A Set may be lit using theatrical lighting or by simpler means, producing
a range of new effects, and this new art form gives new opportunities for
curators, whose role in the display of Sets may resemble in some ways the
role of the theatre director.
The works which become part of the Set
are the elements and may incorporate words as well as images. The elements
making up the Set may include oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, photographs,
posters and pieces of writing in prose and poetry. Poems may be in the new
forms I have devised, which establish completely new linkages between words
and the picture space: fragmented poetry, which has very important implications
for the way in which the picture space is read - it provides an order for
reading the picture space - faulted poetry, in which there is a linkage with
geological faulting of strata, and unit poetry, a completely new form of concrete
poetry.
Intra-linkages are linkages and contrasts within one single work of art. Throughout
the history of art, the emphasis has been upon the individual work. For example,
in a hypothetical abstract work, there may be linkages and contrasts within
the larger rectangle, the frame, of tonal values, curvilinear and rectilinear
form, regular geometrical shape and irregular shape. A single work may also
have a contrast between the abstract and the figurative.
Inter-linkages are linkages and contrasts
between the works or elements which make up the Set. Linkages and contrasts
within each element do not lose any of their importance, but the arrangement
of different elements enables new linkages and contrasts to emerge, with endless
variety. The next example, which, again, is just for illustrative purposes,
shows a hypothetical Set. The larger rectangle now shows the limits of the
wall of the gallery and the smaller rectangles and the ellipse are the different
elements making up the Set, arranged on the wall of the gallery. There are
contrasts of tonal value, dark and light, or high key and low key. If this
Set includes works in different media, for example, pastels, paintings in
acrylics and a work which uses line and wash, then there are contrasts of
medium, although these contrasts are possible within one separate work (Klee,
for example, sometimes used watercolours and oils in a single work, after
taking up oils in 1919.) No internal detail is shown, but each of the elements
has an internal structure, just like the single work shown above, and in this
case, each of the elements is purely abstract, except for a non-abstract element,
an outline drawing of hills (an element may not be enclosed in a frame.) There
is a contrast in the Set, then, between the figurative and the abstract.
The work with the elliptical frame over
the hills may suggest the sun or the moon. Ian Simpson, in ‘Drawing:
seeing and observation,’ writes: ‘A problem that has faced many
abstract artists is that while they want to produce work which is removed
from the association of objects, this can prove to be almost impossible. If
a horizontal line is drawn across a rectangle, we tend to see this as the
horizon in a landscape with the lower part of the rectangle a ground plane
and the upper part sky.’ However, the opposite is also true: a composition
of sea and sky, with little internal detail, can be read as an abstract piece:
this is figurative-abstraction and, of course, this is far from being a new
development. To give just one example, some of Paul Nash’s landscapes
were formalized until they were almost abstract. Furthermore, in a figurative
piece with a rectangular frame, the frame itself can be regarded as an abstract
component. Abstraction can be introduced into a figurative work, or the level
of abstraction increased in a partly figurative work, by various means: this
is intensification of abstraction. One is abstract blocking: part of a figurative
painting is hidden by a rectangular or other shape. In some of the elements
in Sets completed so far, there is an effective contrast between the blocking
rectangle and the moon, now also read as a circular abstract shape. In the
illustrative example below, all that is shown are rectangular frame, blocking
rectangle and circular moon - no other figurative details.
A further technique is to decrease the figurative level - or to bring about
a tension between abstraction and figuration - by mixing genres. This is done
in one of the elements of Set I, ‘Sailing from Belfast.’ A still-life
is superimposed on a landscape. I make great use of techniques of intensification
and tension in other areas.
Frames
There are linkages with (1) the frame
made of wood or some other material around a picture (2) the frames used in
graphics programs and other computer programs. The term ‘frame’
is used for regular geometrical shapes. An outline marks the boundary of non-regular
shapes, such as a person, foliage, hills.
Most frames will continue to be rectangular,
but there are other possibilities, which, obviously, have already been used
by artists. For example, the oval was often used by artists in the Baroque
and Rococo periods. The shaped canvas was used by Frank Stella, Elizabeth
Murray (who used the shaped canvas in a particularly original way) and, in
Britain, Richard Smith and Anthony Green (a figurative painter.) In the Set,
linkages between rectangular frames (which may contrast markedly in other
ways), and contrasts between rectangular and oval frames can obviously be
put to artistic use, but very subtle effects are also possible. For example,
there is the contrast between a frame which is circular and one which is almost
circular but is oval - in mathematical terms, an ellipse where the two foci
are close together.
Frames on a computer screen can be re-sized.
This is not possible for the frames which are part of the Set, but, as is
explained below, many different lighting effects can be used in a Set and
one of them enables temporary frames to be created and these can be re-sized
- decreased but not expanded. A spot-light may illuminate a picture with a
circular frame so that the limits of the sharply-defined light coincide with
the frame. The spot-light may then illuminate a smaller portion of the picture,
creating a smaller temporary frame, whilst the periphery of the picture is
left completely dark.
This illustrates the difference between
the fixed image and the
variable image. The Set makes very radical use of the variable image. The
use of temporary frames is just one example, and one of the less important
examples. Graphics programs have accustomed users to the idea that images
are not fixed but can be endlessly changed. The dimensions, resolution, brightness,
contrast, intensity, saturation, the balance of shadows and highlights. Images
can be blended, contoured, extruded. And these sophisticated techniques are
often used to produce works which are artistically worthless or negligible
or striking but trivial. Even at their best, the images tend to have a manufactured
and essentially uniform quality.
Even so, the concept of transformation,
change and metamorphosis which computing has made so influential will continue
to influence art in the future. In the Set, unlimited change is not used.
Instead, there is the contrast, and tension, between what is permanent and
what is changed. The importance of concentration remains. The ability to concentrate
on a work of art or a feature for long periods is too great an advantage to
be rejected. It distinguishes visual art from art forms which exist in time,
such as music, drama and the reading of prose or poetry. (Alexander Sturgis,
in his book ‘Telling Time’ makes clear that the differences are
not clear-cut: to look at a picture takes time.) The contrast between the
time-bound and the time-free is yet another contrast which is made use of
in the set, as, for example, when words are superimposed on images. Furthermore,
the fragmentation of lines of poetry allows the non-temporal aspects of poetry
to be explored whilst the same technique accentuates the temporal aspects
of visual art. These techniques, as so many others, increase the richness
and complexity of the Set.
Windows
There is a linkage with (1) the windows
of computing (2) architectural windows
The elements of a set may give views (the linkage with ‘view’
which is shown near to ‘window’ in the menu bar of a windows program
is intentional) into radically different realities, views into radically contrasted
aspects of the same reality, or views which explore different but closely
related aspects of reality. Reality is inexhaustible, each aspect of reality
is inexhaustible. The fact that one depiction, one window, cannot possibly
do justice to something which is inexhaustible is one of the justifications
for the Set - multiple windows are needed to do greater justice, but even
then, only partial justice, to the subject of the Set. What is viewed cannot
be exhausted even if it changes very little, but change presents further challenges,
and the different windows of a set may specifically explore change, another
of the themes explored in Alexander Sturgis’s ‘Telling Time.’
A ‘view’ does not have purely
visual connotations in the Set. A view may become a vision, something which
is psychologically penetrating, something which tries to capture a deeper
insight or tries to capture the essence of a person, an animal, a plant, a
scene, an inanimate object, abstract objects - if that is possible. Brancusi
felt that ‘what is real is not the external form but the essence of
things. Starting from this truth it is impossible for anyone to express anything
real by imitating its exterior surface.’ The multiple windows of a Set
have as exemplary standards such multiple works as Monet’s first series
of paintings, consisting of twenty paintings of one facade, the west front
of Rouen Cathedral, or his later and greatest series, which was concerned
with his garden near the village of Giverny. Rembrandt’s series of more
than eighty self-portraits are a further and very profound example.
The windows of architecture are one
of the features of a building which in their placing and relative size have
so much to offer to the designer of a Set. Windows may contribute to the harmony,
balance and poise of an Italian Renaissance building. They may contribute
to the restlessness, exuberance, expansiveness and spatial complexity of a
building in the Baroque style. In the International Modern Style, the wall
may be dominated by the windows, until the wall is almost all window. In a
medieval castle, the windows are small and the wall forbidding. Stained glass
windows give radiance to the interior of a gothic cathedral. All these effects,
and others, can be achieved - or rather approximated - by the choice of elements,
taking account of their size in relation to the size of the wall, and by suitable
lighting of the elements, if special lighting is used. A fully contemporary
version of stained glass can be achieved by the existing technique of superimposing
images on sheets of perspex or glass which can be illuminated by artificial
light instead of natural light. The actual windows of a wall can become part
of the Set. The view through an actual window then contrasts, or complements,
the view through the windows of the paintings and other art works. Even a
completely abstract work provides a view, a purely internal view, in contrast
to the external view of a figurative work.
I use the architectural term fenestration
for the placing of windows in the Set. It will be obvious that a Set designer
has far more freedom than the architect in the placing of windows, since the
architect has to consider function and practical use to a large extent but
the Set designer does not.
Ground
and field
The term ground is used in an established
sense, ‘the background of a painting or main surface against which the
other parts of a work of art appear superimposed.’ (Collins English
Dictionary) but I restrict the use of the term to the individual work, the
element. The wall of the gallery or other space, on which the elements appear
superimposed, is the field. A designer of a set needs to consider carefully
the field as well as the placing and external illumination of the elements.
As is explained above, the elements may dominate the field or the ratio between
the surface area of the field and the surface area of the elements may be
very different, the elements tiny in comparison with the field. There may
be an effective contrast between the elements clustered at one end of the
Set and the bare field at the other, between visual interest and empty space
- or lighting effects may flood the bare field with an impermanent visual
interest.
In some cases it may be practicable
to repaint the wall, which is the field. In other cases it may not be, but
external lighting is able to transform the colour and the tone of the field
very readily. The field may be a neutral background or it may be highly charged
in itself. It may resemble the yellow of so many buildings in Germany and
Austria. The field may suggest harsh concrete, and the elements placed on
the field may be windows into a softer and a gentler world - or the elements
may intensify the harshness of the field, giving an unforgettable insight
into a bleak reality. This is another example of intensification and tension.
Linkages with the fields of Physics
are important. In Physics, a field represents the way in which objects which
are not in contact can influence each other and provides an obvious analogy
- but no more than an analogy - for the interactions between the objects,
the elements, arranged on the wall of the gallery, if they are not in contact
and do not overlap. For me, the concept of ‘field’ is highly charged,
it has great ‘semantic force,’ in the sense discussed in ‘Linkage,
contrast and pattern.’
By considering gravitational, magnetic
and electric fields (in a very general way - there is no need to make use
of scientific theory,) it is more likely that the Set designer will handle
the elements in a dynamic and not an inert way. The designer will be using
a purely artistic analogue of physical fields, except for the gravitational
field, which the Set designer may need to take account of to some extent (the
architect, of course, has to treat gravity very seriously.)
An element placed high in the field
may seem precarious - it has had to be lifted against the force of gravity,
which continues to act on the object. Once in position, it may seem to have
a dominating influence in the Set. Alternatively, the element may seem to
float, like the rectangles in the ‘Eight Red Rectangles’ (1915)
by Malevich, ‘as though gravity had ceased to have a hold on them.’
(Anna Moszynska, ‘Abstract Art.)
An element which is very significant
or prominent for some reason, such as size, may seem to exert a kind of force
on the less prominent elements in its sphere of influence. Elements which
are in close proximity will tend to influence each other, but if the distance
between them is increased, the influence will become less and less - here,
the analogy with physical fields is obvious. Just as there are forces of repulsion
as well as attraction in all the fields of Physics except for gravitational
fields, there may be apparent repulsion effects between the elements in the
artistic field. This will depend upon the content of these elements.
Such effects as these are familiar enough
as they apply to the components of a single work, but the much greater distances
within the Set make for differences of kind as well as degree and allow new
techniques to be attempted. One of these is the frontier. Anyone who has stood
at a frontier and looked into the territory over the frontier, where the conditions
of life may be completely different, will appreciate the fact that passing
a line in space may alter so much. This highly charged aspect of space can
be explored in a Set, two completely different artistic worlds adjoining each
other on the field.
What can be called field effects are
complicated by matters of directionality. In reading the page of a book, the
natural order of reading is from left to right (if the language used is one
like English) and from the top of the page to the bottom of the page but the
order of reading a Set, particularly a large-scale Set, whose vertical as
well as horizontal dimensions are great, is not so straightforward. The natural
tendency is to read the elements in the Set from left to right, but an element
at eye-level will tend to be read before an element which is at a great height,
unless the highest set is quite obviously the focal element and the element
at eye-level is not at all prominent. When fragmented poetry is used in the
Set as a whole, then this determines the way in which the Set is read to a
large extent, just as it determines the order of reading the element, when
it is used within a single element.
Stage set
and mathematical set
There are linkages between the Set and
(1) the stage set (2) the mathematical set The vivid and concrete reality
of (1) and the abstraction of (2) show how diverse are the linkages between
the Set and other fields.
(1) Artificial lighting is usual for stage sets and the artistic Set may be
lit using some of the equipment of stage lighting, or by much simpler means.
This is external lighting, whereas internal lighting is the light shown by
the artist: either a light source shown in a work making up the Set, such
as a painted moon or the indeterminate sources which were used by artists
until the innovations of Caravaggio. External lighting can be used for various
artistic ends, for example:
a) To extend the use of arbitrary colour, which has been used by Gauguin,
Van Gogh and, obviously, many other painters. By lighting the Set, colour
within the picture space can be altered at will.
b) To alter the focus. Part of the picture space can be emphasized or de-emphasized.
c) To give a wide range of atmospheric ‘neo-impressionistic’ effects,
dramatic as well as subtle.
d) As one of the techniques (but not one of the more important) to change
the level of abstraction in the Set or to change the A circular or elliptical,
sharply focused image produced by a spotlight increases the level of abstraction
in a Set which is completely or partly figurative.
e) To provide all or part of the lettering in a Set, by means of a projector
linked to a computer. This is external lettering or luminous lettering, whereas
lettering which is superimposed on images or placed next to images using a
pen, brush or printing is internal lettering. Recorded sound employs another
theatrical technique, although the means can be very simple: a tape loop which
gives the words of the poem or prose piece.
f) To emphasize texture and the three-dimensionality of sculptures and other
three-dimensional objects in the Set by casting shadows.
g) To cast shadows on the wall of the gallery - the new artistic form of shadow
art. For example, in Set III, a Set which does require a very great wall area
to display it, or more accurately a very high wall, one of the elements of
the Set are shadows: the vast shadows of the twin towers of Cologne cathedral,
produced by illuminating a simple model with an intense light source, and
the much smaller shadows cast by those who are viewing the Set and who as
a result become part of the Set.
(h) to create temporary frames.
The Set may be viewed by the general
lighting of a gallery, with no particular arrangements made, or in daylight,
but there are often substantial benefits if theatrical lighting is employed,
and the lighting equipment is not expensive or is easily hired. The equipment
needed, in this case the equipment needed to produce theatrical lighting effects
on one wall, is less than that owned by the average secondary school. Although
lighting will often increase the impact and the interest of a Set, I specify
in every case alternative effects which can be used if special lighting is
not available. However, even ordinary domestic or office lighting, using in
some cases simple shades of different colours and types, can be used if necessary
to supplement the lighting of the gallery.
The theatre owes a very great debt to
the ideas of Adolphe Appia, the Swiss designer and pioneer of modern lighting
effects. I am confident that the world of art will be similarly indebted.
By far the best introduction to Appia’s innovations, and to the use
of light in the theatre in general, as opposed to specific techniques using
specific lighting sources, is ‘The ideas of Adolphe Appia’ by
Lee Simonson, an essay which is very accessible - it can be found in ‘The
theory of the modern stage’ by Eric Bentley, published by Penguin.
The lighting effects in the theatre,
shadowy recesses, chiaroscuro, blazing highlights, hazy, mottled expanses,
subtly modulated colours, harsh glare, concentration upon essentials, atmospheric
penumbras and all the other, almost infinite lighting effects, can be used
in lighting the artistic set on the wall of an art gallery. In the theatre,
lighting changes with time, sometimes very quickly. In the lighting of the
set, I favour either an unchanging light or a light with few and only gradual
changes. An exception is a ‘lighthouse effect,’ a form of pulse
lighting: a light beam pierces the darkness at predictable intervals. This
has various uses. For example, if one of the elements is brightly coloured
or is otherwise striking but is intended to be a subsidiary element, then
it may become an unwanted focus, but if it is kept in constant dim light then
its colour cannot be appreciated at all. In other forms of pulse lighting,
part of the Set is illuminated fitfully, at irregular intervals.
There is one important difference between
lighting the Set and lighting a stage set. In gallery lighting, there is a
requirement not only for effective display but also for conservation. Intense
and prolonged light may in time cause damage to a painting. However, many
Sets will use very subdued lighting effects which are less intense than normal
gallery lighting. Intense light will often not be constant but intermittent.
Conservation does not, in fact, raise difficulties for the display of Sets.
(2) Objects which are part of a mathematical
set are called elements in set theory. This is why, in the artistic Set, the
works which make up the Set are called elements. A Set may have a focal element,
given emphasis by size, lighting or other means. An element is made up of
sub-elements, for example rectangles, ellipses, irregular shapes and lines
in a purely abstract Set.
This gives a simple hierarchical organization made up of different
levels:
Set
elements
sub-elements
which can be compared with the complex organization of higher organisms:
populations of organisms
organisms
organ systems
organs
cells
sub-cellular structures, eg the nucleus of the cell
In modern science and technology, the
study of higher-level entities, entities which are linked, is so important.
In ecology, the focus of attention is not upon the single living organisms
but upon linkages between organisms. The internet is made up of linked computers.
A Set, which is concerned with inter-linkages, the linkages between works,
is at the same time a single, higher-order work. (The term ‘higher’
refers, of course, only to a place an the hierarchical organization.)
A Set may occasionally contain hyperlinks
which have a resemblance with the hyperlinks of the internet. At various points
in the Set, the viewer is directed to entities on a different wall of the
gallery, or in a different gallery.
A Set may contain Sub-Sets or layers
(the term ‘layers’ gives a linkage with the layers of Graphics
programs.) The use of layers in a Set helps to increase the richness and complexity
of a Set. There are innumerable ways of using layers. For example, the abstract
elements in a Set may belong to one Sub-Set and one layer whilst figurative
elements belong to another. Elements which are predominantly verbal may belong
to one layer, elements which are predominantly visual to another. Complexity,
richness, intricacy, attention to detail will be important features of most
Sets, but it would be more true to say that what is important in the Set is
the contrast or tension between complexity, richness, intricacy and attention
to detail on the one hand and on the other, directness and simplicity - or
the union of these things. When there are a considerable number of layers
or Sub-Sets, it may be useful on occasion to identify them by using colour-coded
frames for pictures.
One way of blending layers may produce
a whole with subtle richness, for which the sense of taste gives a good analogy
- a complex wine rather than a crude one. Other works will take us well beyond
a world of tastes and sensations, no matter how subtle, into a world of dissonance,
contradiction and paradox which is fully contemporary and which reflects the
contradictions of our age: for example, a poem with a harmonious and serene
abstract shape with a content which is raw, disturbing or tragic, or a poem
in an abstract shape which contains a number of time strata, set against a
figurative, realistic background.
Unlike the mathematical set, the placing
of the elements in the two-dimensional picture space (or three-dimensional
space if some of the elements are three-dimensional) is all-important. It
is often convenient, however, to give a concise listing of the elements in
a Set which gives information about the elements, although not about their
arrangement in space. On the first line I give the number of the Set, using
Roman numerals, the title, if any, and, usually, an organizing principle,
for example, map, thematic, radial, linear, clustered, symmetrical or asymmetrical,
the seasons. For convenience, a purely random arrangement of elements is also
described as an organizing principle. On the next lines, there is information
about the numbered elements: their title, if any, the medium used, whether
figurative or abstract or, as so often, both, whether or not the element incorporates
words.
Interpretation
Like drama and music, which are performed
and so interpreted, the Set is an interpreted art form. Most visual art is
uninterpreted in this sense, but Performance art is an obvious exception.
There are interpretations of the composer’s or dramatist’s work
which are searching and other interpretations which are barely adequate or
worse.
Design of a Set, production of a Set
and display of a Set are different activities and require different skills.
Set design entails such matters as the choice of elements, in the light of
an organizing principle, and the placing of elements in general terms, without
consideration of a specific site. The designer will also consider the lighting
which is best used, but again in general terms. The designer should take account
of practicalities, and if special lighting equipment will not be available,
should make alternative arrangements. The designer may make use of elements
which are already to hand or may need to commission some or all of the elements
which will make up the Set.
Production of a set entails the creation
of the elements. The Set designer may well be involved in the creation of
elements but in many cases not in the creation of all of them. The creation
of elements is more likely than Set design to require collaborative work.
For example, if poetry and paintings are to be part of the design, then one
person will be able to work in both forms only if he or she has the versatility
of a William Blake.
When a Set is to be displayed in a specific
site, then the Set designer may also be responsible for the display of the
Set. If the Set is two-dimensional, the wall (or part of a wall or more than
one wall) can be displayed to scale on a computer program, using a graphics
program and the elements, again, to scale, can easily be moved to arrive at
what seems the most effective placing. Alternatively, the work can be done
on paper. However, what works on the computer screen or on paper may not work
so well on the actual wall and there is no substitute for working in the actual
site. If special lighting equipment is used, then this is essential. Most
designers will not have the skills of a specialist lighting designer and need
to collaborate with a lighting designer if the lighting is of any complexity.
The dramatist who writes the play may
lack the skills of a theatre director and if there are many different productions
will not be able to direct all of them. For various reasons, it may not always
be appropriate for the Set designer to be responsible for display of the Set.
The designer may live in one country and the Set may be displayed in a distant
country. It is reasonable to suppose that those who work in a gallery, who
have a ‘feel’ for the specific site and who have been involved
in the display of works there of works may well have insights which the designer
lacks, unless the designer happens to be associated with the same gallery.
Whoever is responsible for the display
of the Set can be referred to as the Set director, who has overall responsibility
like a theatre director and who, like the theatre director, can call upon
the skills of others, such as a lighting designer. The lighting designer will
also be responsible for sound, if needed, such as recorded speech. A curator
may act as the Set director, or the curator may ask another individual to
direct the display of the Set.
Display of a Set will be demanding.
The director will work from a design produced by the Set designer but will
often need to suggest radical changes in the design - an asymmetrical rather
than a symmetrical placing of the elements, for example, the removal of one
of the elements a considerable distance, placing it in relative isolation.
A small change in the distance apart of two elements may have a pronounced
effect on the visual impact and the overall artistic success of the Set. Typographers
know that subtle changes in kerning, other changes in the relationships between
letter forms and within letter forms, can have a marked effect on the impact
of text.
Obviously, the director will avoid elementary
mistakes, such as placing a picture poem so high that the words cannot be
read at all, although complete legibility is not always necessary. (For interesting
discussions of legibility in lettering and about so many other aspects of
this important topic, see ‘Letterwork: Creative Letterforms in Graphic
Design’ by Brody Neuenschwander.)
The Set, like the theatre, is essentially
a collaborative form. It gives artists, including lettering artists, and designers,
including graphic designers and lighting designers, as well as writers in
prose and poetry, a vast new range of possibilities. It is perfectly possible
to incorporate live music in the Set and to make use of the skills of composers
and performers, and to incorporate experimental theatre, and to include dramatists,
actors and actresses in the creation of Sets.
Sets
complete/in progress
All the paintings and drawings in these
Sets are the work of a gifted artist, Paul Evans. I'm responsible for all
the other elements in the Sets and for their conception and design. Paul Evans
has since died. The circumstances of his death were harrowing in the extreme.
He was a fellow-worker rather than a personal friend but the shock of his
death was enormous.
The organizing principle of Set
I, 'Sailing from Belfast,' is geographical. The viewer has to have
a mental map of part of the Irish Sea in the centre of the Set, the coast
of Northern Ireland at top left, showing Belfast, and on the North coast of
the Province, the town of Portstewart. At bottom right is part of the English
coast, near to Liverpool. The focal element is a picture
poem - an oil painting 86 x 102 cm showing a storm at sea and a ferry boat
with the fragmented poem which gives its name to the Set superimposed on the
picture space. This poem is also called 'Sailing from Belfast.' There are
four monochrome pictures in chalk and charcoal near to it. Dimensions of each
are 59 x 42cm. There as an oil painting (90 x 122cm) and a further poem in
matrix form, 'Portstewart' at top left.
The organizing principle of Set
II, 'Two bombers exploded...' is an explosion, the Set showing a
collision between bombers above wartime Cologne. The focal element is the
picture poem with the same name as the Set, a poem in the rigorous unit form
with an abstract design. The poem will be displayed at a large size, depending
upon the size of the wall which is available for display. An intense light
source casts shadows of the twin spires of Cologne cathedral, using a model
of the spires. The shadows of the spectators will complete the Set.
The organizing principle of Set
III, 'Spring dawn...' derives from the content of the poem which
is the focal element in a rectangular frame. The poem is in perspective lettering,
both linear and aerial perspective being used. The result is that the words
of the final line, 'Winter night' are in very large, deep black letters, the
tonality of the letters suggesting the blankness and blackness of a winter
night. The poem is shaped and forms an abstract design. The poem is far less
simple than it might appear, since it is organized according to the principle
of semantic linkage or linkage by meaning.
The four poem linked with the focal
element are 'Spring' at the top side, 'Summer' at the left and 'Autumn' at
the right. The most complex by far is 'Summer,' a fragmented picture poem
linked with a watercolour. It might be expected that the frame enclosing 'Winter'
would be placed at the lower side, to form a symmetrical pattern, but instead,
expectations are not fulfilled and instead, the frame is removed some distance
to the right. 'Winter' is a poem in matrix form. The large expanse of the
field above it is illuminated by a green or red curtain of shimmering light,
suggesting the Aurora Borealis. If this lighting effect is impracticable with
the available equipment then a substitution is made: an oil painting of the
Northern Lights (129 x 71cm) and two works in chalk and charcoal, each with
dimensions 59 x 42cm.
