- titled: lower left in margin, in pencil
- signed: (underlined) lower right in margin, in pencil;
numbered lower left in margin, in pencil; printer's chop in lower
right corner
- medium: 19-piece relief collagraph using 9 colors;
printed by Efram Wolff, Van Nuys, California
- dimensions: iage size: 10 5/8 x 13 1/2" (27.0 x 34.3
cm); sheet size: 17 1/2 x 19 3/4" (44.5 x 50.2 cm)
- edition: 150 prints, 30 artist's proofs, 2 printer's
proofs; all white Arches Cover paper
- date published: 1980
Personal Reflections, by Arthur Secunda
When I think of clarity and simplicity in art, my thoughts
invariably flash back to Hans Arp. On a recent visit to the
Fondation Arp in Clamart outside of Paris I once again focused on
the soft, sensuous surfaces of his sculptures and the reduction of
his forms to quintessential essences. In my mind I often translated
his biomorphic figures to a sort of surreal landscape imagery.
I remember a discussion with the great French photographer,
Lucien Clergue, prior to our joint exhibition in Barcelona on the
subject of sensuality in landscape. We concluded that soft, blended
graduations of falling light will communicate mystery, a tactile
sense of form and transcendental sensuality in any
medium - painting, photography, sculpture and even architecture (as
in Antoni Gaudi, for example). This is a quality that, in my view,
present day minimalists, by and large, lack. On the other hand,
there is very little in our everyday urban culture that is truly
organic, in the sense of offering visual continuity, rational
movement of people, or environmental pride. Of course it is no
wonder then that artists reflect this cacophony of harshness and
non-sequitur through contemporary expressions of non-sensuous
violent sex and banal aggression.
Unless one is exposed to "another place" one has no reason to
believe that that other place exists or know what we, who do
know, are talking about. In composing the muted grid-like structure
of the relief-collograph, Another Place, I attempted to set
up a spatial balance something like the tension in a Kenneth
Snelson sculpture. I wanted the sun-moon and the three cypress
trees to be speaking to one another in a whispered conversation. At
the same time, I tried to cleanse each horizontal land form of
superfluous "hot spots", to give the composition a sort of laid
back soft and sexy Mondrianesque underpinning without compromising
solidity or structure.
For me the other place depicted in Another Place is
Shangri-la, somewhere over the rainbow. An anecdote related to me
by Bill Rubin some years back when he was a regular visitor
chez-Picasso comes to mind. The subject of discussion was a
particular Cezanne painting of l'Estaque belonging to the master.
Bill described Picasso, pounding the area on the canvas depicting
the sea with his fist, and in his coarse Spanish accent rolling his
rrrs, repeating," Rrregardez la Merrra - c'est solide comme la
terrral".
Its this abstracted quality of solidity we artists must strive
for to make our art palpable and enduring. When I created
Another Place with softness and simplicity, my hope was that
its inner power would be cosmic yet unmistakably present.
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