paintings on unstretched canvas

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Leonardo Paintings on Unstretched Canvas Author(s): Gareth Jones Source: Leonardo, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Autumn, 1972), pp. 337-338 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1572590 . Accessed: 10/06/2014 07:11 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The MIT Press and Leonardo are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Leonardo. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 188.72.96.180 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 07:11:14 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Paintings on Unstretched Canvas

Leonardo

Paintings on Unstretched CanvasAuthor(s): Gareth JonesSource: Leonardo, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Autumn, 1972), pp. 337-338Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1572590 .

Accessed: 10/06/2014 07:11

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The MIT Press and Leonardo are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toLeonardo.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.96.180 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 07:11:14 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Paintings on Unstretched Canvas

Leonardo, Vol. 5, pp. 337-338. Pergamon Press 1972. Printed in Great Britain

PAINTINGS ON UNSTRETCHED

CANVAS

Gareth Jones*

1. GENERAL REMARKS

The function of a painting is to present images for contemplation that are endowed with aesthetic qualities and meaning. Since images are chosen for specific purposes, all the elements of which they are composed as well as the processes involved in the making of a painting are decisive for achieving the results desired.

A traditional painting is composed of three parts: support, priming and paint layer or layers. The support for a mural painting is a wall. For an easel painting it may be a panel of wood or some other material, or a cloth stretched on a frame. A rigid support obviously has different properties from a stretched flexible material.

By tradition, mural painting has been considered to be the highest hierarchical order in painting, therefore, I believe the intention is for a stretched flexible material to approach the properties of a wall. Evidently, the character of a support in- fluences the manner in which a painting is executed and the visual qualities of the painting itself. An image painted on a wall, a panel of wood or on a stretched canvas will give quite different results. I find that the first will give to a painting a feeling of solidity, the second of rigidity and the third of tensility. If this is accepted, it means that one should not attempt to transfer styles of painting from one kind of support to another.

The location of a painting is critical for its inter- pretation. Murals are commissioned for a specific place and the artist should take into account its environment. A mural is not intended to be moved, therefore, I object to murals being taken from their original locations for exhibition purposes.

On the other hand, an easel painting generally is not made for any specific environment. A case can be made that stretched canvas evolved from painted banners in the early part of the fifteenth century [1] and, though much has been written on the concern of artists for the effect on a painting of weight of cloth, its tightness and closeness of weave, and its

* Artist living at 4 Redcliffe Close, Old Brompton Road, London SW5, England. (Received 26 April 1971.)

grain and texture, these factors took on importance only much later. The real impetus was to make 'portable' murals that came from the new market for art of the rising mercantile class at the end of fifteenth century [1].

There are two types of wall surface preparation for murals using the fresco technique and both seem to have been adopted as methods for painting on canvas. In the first type of fresco painting, called true fresco, earth pigments mixed with water are applied to wet plaster that then set with the plaster [2, 3]. The painted image is physically a part of the wall surface. Since the pigment is absorbed by the plaster, the surface remains uniformly flat, there is no impasto. Recently, this process has been imitated, consciously or unconsciously, by staining an unprimed canvas with acrylic dyes, e.g. the work of Morris Louis, the American painter.

In the second type of fresco painting, called dry fresco, the painting is done directly on dry plaster, which gives the paint a brilliant and sharp appear- ance [2, 3]. This also has its imitators, for example the 'hard edge' geometric paintings of many artists in the 1950's and 1960's. Much attention has been paid to the 'edge' of a painting, whereas I find that the real issue hinges on the hard wooden stretcher, which affects both the surface and the perimeter of the canvas. To paint on loose canvas and then to stretch it on a rigid wooden frame is to negate the intentions implicit in the original act. This mis- understanding is exemplified in the works of Jackson Pollock and more recently by Kenneth Showell.

2. ON MY EXPERIENCE WITH PAINTING ON UNSTRETCHED CANVAS

Considerations of the different kinds of supports for paintings led me to make paintings on un- stretched canvas that was to remain unstretched. The folds that form when cloth is hung vertically from one or more points became an important part of the exercise.

I approached the paintings from the side, painting the sides of the folds in contrast to the traditional plan view. All objects on a wall can theoretically

I

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Page 3: Paintings on Unstretched Canvas

Gareth Jones

Fig. 3. 'Tair', canvas, kapok, acrylic paint andpolymer varnish, 90 x 52 x 121 in., 1970. .. Detail ofD WY canvas, kapok, acrylicpaint and

Fig. 2. Detailof'D varnishY', canvas, kapok, acrylicpaintand polymer varnish, 96 x 96 x 18 in., 1970.

be viewed from five distinct directions. Of course, viewing from the bottom and the top is rarely possible. A viewer is invited to view each of my paintings from both sides and from the front. Though I was unaware whilst making the paintings, I learned later that they bore a relationship to Op art paintings [4] that are made on surfaces consisting of triangular ridges or of curved surfaces [5].

I arbitrarily decided to use not more than three different colours in any one painting [6] and I apply the paint as a spray. A coat of transparent varnish is then sprayed over the painted surface to give brilliance to the colours. The appearance of wet paint seems to detach the painting from the sur- roundings in that light is reflected from the surface as though from a mirror. Furthermore, since one can hope that viewers will not touch paint that appears wet, this hesitation may give the painting more of a feeling of detachment from the sur- roundings (Fig. 1, cf. colour plate; Figs. 2 and 3).

The quality of reflected light from a painting depends on the background on which it is hung. On a white wall, paintings appear to recede whereas on a dark background they appear as a source of illumination. Paintings one sees in museums and galleries generally are placed against a white back- ground. The effect is to emphasise the substance

of the colour of the painting. This was something I did not want. By placing my paintings against a black background they took on the ethereal lumino- sity I desired.

The laborious process of mural painting implied an audience that would be prepared to spend a good deal of time with each painting. However, the audience has changed, people now tend only to 'glance' at paintings and this fact is influencing the type of paintings that artists produce.

The invitation to viewers to look at my unstretched canvas paintings from three main viewing points should induce them, I hope to look longer, thus re-introducing the element of contemplation into visual art.

REFERENCES

1. G. Argan, Painting, in Encyclopaedia of World Art, Vol. 10 (London: McGraw-Hill, 1965) p. 915.

2. Ref. 1, p. 916. 3. G. Hale, The Technique of Fresco Painting (New

York: Dover, 1966). 4. E. de Bertola, On Space and Time and the Visual

Arts, Leonardo 5, 27 (1972). 5. P. K. Hoenich, An Op Art Picture on Contiguous

Double Curved Minimal Surfaces, Leonardo 4, 25 (1971).

6. W. Bannard, Colour Painting and the Map Problem, Artforum, p. 60 (March 1970).

338

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Page 4: Paintings on Unstretched Canvas

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Top left: L. Pesek, 'Saturn', tempera, 38 x 50 cm., 1969. (Photo courtesy ? National Geo- graphic Society, Washington, D.C., 1970.) (Fig. 4, cf. page 299.)

Top right: Eric Cameron, 'Woods, II', detail of class project, painted wood construction, 1970. (Fig. 4, cf. page 290.)

Bottom left: Gareth Jones, 'UN', canvas and kapok, acrylic paint and polymer varnish, 96 x 96 x 18 in., 1970. (Fig. 1, cf. page 338.)

Bottom right: E. B. Weill, 'Solo pour cuivre', Metaform, color photograph, 1961. (Fig. 7, cf. page 303.)

Top left: L. Pesek, 'Saturn', tempera, 38 x 50 cm., 1969. (Photo courtesy ? National Geo- graphic Society, Washington, D.C., 1970.) (Fig. 4, cf. page 299.)

Top right: Eric Cameron, 'Woods, II', detail of class project, painted wood construction, 1970. (Fig. 4, cf. page 290.)

Bottom left: Gareth Jones, 'UN', canvas and kapok, acrylic paint and polymer varnish, 96 x 96 x 18 in., 1970. (Fig. 1, cf. page 338.)

Bottom right: E. B. Weill, 'Solo pour cuivre', Metaform, color photograph, 1961. (Fig. 7, cf. page 303.)

Top left: L. Pesek, 'Saturn', tempera, 38 x 50 cm., 1969. (Photo courtesy ? National Geo- graphic Society, Washington, D.C., 1970.) (Fig. 4, cf. page 299.)

Top right: Eric Cameron, 'Woods, II', detail of class project, painted wood construction, 1970. (Fig. 4, cf. page 290.)

Bottom left: Gareth Jones, 'UN', canvas and kapok, acrylic paint and polymer varnish, 96 x 96 x 18 in., 1970. (Fig. 1, cf. page 338.)

Bottom right: E. B. Weill, 'Solo pour cuivre', Metaform, color photograph, 1961. (Fig. 7, cf. page 303.)

Top left: L. Pesek, 'Saturn', tempera, 38 x 50 cm., 1969. (Photo courtesy ? National Geo- graphic Society, Washington, D.C., 1970.) (Fig. 4, cf. page 299.)

Top right: Eric Cameron, 'Woods, II', detail of class project, painted wood construction, 1970. (Fig. 4, cf. page 290.)

Bottom left: Gareth Jones, 'UN', canvas and kapok, acrylic paint and polymer varnish, 96 x 96 x 18 in., 1970. (Fig. 1, cf. page 338.)

Bottom right: E. B. Weill, 'Solo pour cuivre', Metaform, color photograph, 1961. (Fig. 7, cf. page 303.)

[facing p. 306] [facing p. 306] [facing p. 306] [facing p. 306]

e e e e

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