On the Development of My Non-figurative Paintings and Constructions

Leotiurdo, Vol. 8, pp. 150-152. Pergarnon Press 1975. Printed in Great Britain ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MY CONSTRUCTIONS N0N= FIGURATIVE PA1NTINGS AND Alan Turner* 1. Although visual art has been my main means of expression, my studies in secondary school were biased towards the natural sciences. I found that they stimulated my imagination and I gained a respect for scientific methods. I concluded that the culture in which we live is generated largely by the work of scientists and technologists and it is to this aspect of culture that I respond as an artist. It is, however, to Mondrian that I owe my awakening to the possiblities of non-figurative art. A great fillip to my early work as a painter came from the reading of popular texts on visual psychology and other subjects that help one to bridge the rift between art and science. Thus I became interested in form in its own right, as opposed to my earlier view of form as being suggestive of function or purpose or the individual materialization of Platonic stereotypes. This new attitude I expressed in hard-edge non-figurative paintings, where an illusion of space by means of perspective is eliminated but the figure-ground ambiguity described in Gestalt psychology [I] is exploited. The compositions consist of interwoven bounded areas, each of which can be interpreted as constituting the background to the remaining areas. In my later hardedge paintings, areas are grouped together to reduce the figure-ground ambiguity (Fig. I). At this stage, I became dissatisfied with painting on a flat surface and I began to make reliefs and freestanding constructions in which single forms were given physical independence of others in a group. 2. Recently my preoccupation has been with a modular type of construction with geometrical shapes (Fig. 2). When I use the term module for a component in a construction, it is meant to imply not that the component is interchangeable with others but that it is one of a group of components * Artist living at 99 Hornsey Lane, London N6 5LW, England. (Received 22 Jan. 1974.) of similar basic form. In some constructions, components are perceived as modular relative to others that are of very different shape. In Fig. 2 acute angles are repeated in the three components and are in strong contrast to the curved parts of the two smaller components. At no time have I tried to apply specificaesthetic principles or mathematical theorems consciously in my works, as, for example, Crockett Johnson has done in his paintings [2]. ‘I work empirically and trust that my intuition will lead me to aesthetically satisfying results, taking into account my exposure to aspects of science, mathematics and technology. My principal environment as an artist has been a traditional studio. For ten years I have drawn the human figure. I had received instruction in a traditional English art school and this I found valuable. The process of portraying a live model involves an analysis of presented forms. It is from this kind of analysis that I derive mainly the basis for the works that I shall now describe. Differences in end products occur when one uses information gathered from different sources but the main differences result from the way one makes use of that Fig. 1. “Field Coritp1e.r iti Tliree Platies”, ucrjdic puitii 011 cutivos, 40 x 46 in., 1967. 150 On the Development of My Non-jigurative Paintings and Constructions 151 Fig. 2. “Projecting Forms” (maquette), wood and synthetic enamels, 22.5 x 21.5 x 3.25 in., 1972. information. Even a limitedamount of information can be responded to by an artist in a wide variety of ways that lead to different end results. I keep objectives as open as possible when handling selected information. If they are too definite, I believe that the recognition of unanticipated possibilities will be blocked. My flexible objective is the personal discovery of new forms and of their interplay in an arrangement that can be labelled a painting, sculpture or construction. When I speak of making a form, it is in relation to my own awarenessof it. Innovation or creativity of a unique kind is rare, therefore I place...