Two quotes by Gaston Bachelard on verticality and horizontality

“Verticality is ensured by the polarity of cellar and attic, the marks of which are so deep that, in a way, they open up two very different perspectives for a phenomenology of the imagination. Indeed, it is possible, almost without commentary, to oppose the rationality of the roof to the irrationality of the cellar”[1]


“But the height of city buildings is a purely exterior one. Elevators do away with the heroism of stair climbing so that there is no longer any virtue in living up near the sky. Home has become mere horizontality. The different rooms that compose living quarters jammed into one floor all lack one of the fundamental principles for distinguishing and classifying the values of intimacy”[2]


[1] Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 18.
[2] Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 27.

Agnes Martin, Untitled #9, 1999. acrylic and graphite on linen, 12 x 12 (30.5 x 30.5 cm).  

Adolf Loos, Josephine Baker House, Unbuilt, 1928

Drawings (one of Adam)

HuskMitNavn

Just love these... (http://www.charlottefogh.dk/product-category/prints/huskmitnavn/)

Quote by Amédée Ozenfant

"Accustomed to judge painting by what it imitated, the public vociferated or split its sides, in front of canvases in which it could recognize nothing : wonderful discussions took place in the Press, and the most asinine views were exchanged. The astonished public was unable to recognise the extraordinary talent to which these surfaces, painting in so remarkably novel a manner, bore witness : or that, solely as a result of form and colour in no wise representational, unprejudiced minds could derive very real gratification from them".

I have been reading Ozenfant's Foundations of Modern Art on which I hope to include a brief discussion in my dissertation. Although I will be primarily looking at the images included in the text, he does nonetheless come up with these brilliant and wonderfully modern statements, which I can't help but smile at! Here is he talking about the reception of works by Cézanne, who he designates as the forefather of Cubism (which he also suggests could alternatively be called "Super-Cézannism"), Picasso, Braque, and Derain. 

Generation Painting Symposium: Abstraction and British Art 1955-65

On March 5, I attended the Generation Painting Symposium at Downing College at the University of Cambridge where I was introduced to a lot of British abstract painters, some of which include: Richard Smith (presented by my PhD supervisor, Jo Applin), John Hoyland, Frank Auerbach, Prunella Clough and where I got to hear more about David Hockney and Bridget Riley.

Perhaps the individual artwork that struck me most was a collaboration done by Bridget Riley and Ad Reinhardt titled Poor.Old.Tired.Horse from 1966 (presented at the conference by Moran Sheleg, a UCL PhD candidate). This project consists of a set of pages whereby Riley illustrated a series of "0"s and Reinhardt, in his iconic calligraphic style, wrote poetry around them, which read quite similarly to his other manifesto-like writings. Each page declares a different composition, yet all of them partake in a somewhat chance-like abstraction, not only facilitated by Riley's 0s but also through the shapes that Reinhardt forms with his text, which must subsequently react and work around the existing 0s.

Two cabbage heads from the Bowes Museum

Feminist Reading Conference

I am happy to announce that my abstract was accepted to the Feminist Reading Conference at the University of Leeds where I will be presenting a paper titled "Sharon Lockhart and Noa Eshkol: Reading Gesture Through Dance". The conference will take place on April 15 and 16, 2016.

http://dansstockholm.se/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/sharon_lockharthomework2_interpol-960x485.jpeg