Archive for January, 2009

Verner Panton’s Remarkable Sense of Color

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

“I am not fond of white,” Verner Panton wrote in Lidt om Farver (Notes on Colour). “The world would be a more beautiful place without it. There should be a tax on white paint.”

Lately I’ve been reading about Panton—his retrospective book published by the Vitra Design Museum, as well as the aforementioned volume—and I am utterly blown away by how Panton throws himself into using color, and even develops his own color system (in partnership with Mira-X, throughout the 1970s).

Since it is so awash in color, Panton’s color method has inspired me rethink my praxis of—or reliance upon, or addiction to—using white. Looked upon in one way, the selection of white over another color virtually represents a lost opportunity to inject a work with more depth and vibrancy.

For quite some time, I have viewed white as a symbol of purity—a manifestation, or return to, something’s original state. (Perhaps this is a result of being overexposed to cleaning-product ads since birth?) It affords guaranteed negative space in a composition. Further, placed against fluorescent colors, it can make a fluoro red or orange “pop” completely. And it pairs perfectly with black.

Having explored the life’s work of Panton for the past month, however, I’m seeing how white also can be viewed as offering nothing to the visual conversation. It is a “nothing.”

“It saddens me that so many people do not understand that colours are a dimension which can add to the experience,” Panton wrote elsewhere in Notes on Colour. “There is an incredible number of people who fight against the use of colors—but there are also many people who fight against common sense.”

While this line of argument has streamed through my mind, I have been mesmerized by the color charts in Panton’s Mira-X color system. I’ve scanned them from the Vitra volume for you here. The first is Panton’s “version 2” Mira-X system (12 original colors, plus 36 new colors, black and white). Below that is an expanded “version 3” system, (36 additional colors; a total of 86).

I’m truly half-tempted to try to create a color system of my own. Pre-mix all of my paints ahead of time, and rely on those. I suppose it would have a host of fluorescent hues!

In other news: Below are two works on paper I produced over the weekend. These reflect a “Version 2″ design of Civvik. The curves are slightly more angular than the original. Again, because they are works on paper, they are experiments. Whether or not I get them “right” is not a consideration. I am merely making.

In closing, the inauguration of President Obama today culminates a remarkable change of spirit within our culture. The way I feel is this: If you don’t get it, you just don’t get it, period.

Wishing you happiness and the causes of happiness,

—Grant

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Two new paintings: Civvik and Circuit

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

My objectives for last week have been completed, albeit a couple of days late. With the goal of submitting new pieces to an upcoming juried show, I just completed two “full-scale” renderings of smaller studies.

Today I finished Civvik, and on Friday I put the finishing touches on Circuit. Both are 30 inches square and 4 inches deep. The original studies were 10 inches square and 1.5 inches deep.

The new version of Civvik is actually a reworking of the original. I fixed the curves in the stripes, and the top-most white stripe doesn’t spill over the top edge of the canvas. The white stripes are centered upon the horizontal axis.

Details aside, quite a bit of motoring took place to get these done within 10 days. But now I’m ready to start a series of paintings on paper. I am convinced that this is way to go for the near term. At 60 cents per sheet, I can’t go wrong. Paper is the fastest, easiest way to get ideas out and test them. Assembling stretcher bars and stretching canvas takes too long to get ramped up—something I’m not in the mood for.

So we’ll see how the next few days will shake out. Hopefully I’ll have a lot to upload soon.

Otherwise, I just returned my interlibrary loan copy of Paul Klee’s The Thinking Eye. A compilation of Klee’s notebooks, this brilliant book is one page of sketches after another. Klee explores his philosophy of line and form, and how line becomes form, in an almost mystical way. Definitely a book worth checking out. Amazon has it used for $300. But I think I’ll have to sign it out again instead.

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In the Studio: 6 January 2009

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

This post may/may not interest you. It’s one part Norm Abrams, another part Bob Ross. If it does not interest you, I cordially invite you to visit one of the many far more interesting websites on the Internet, such as this.

Sanding Stretcher Bars

Kidding aside, I would like to convey to you what I’m up to, and what my goals are for this week. Over the past couple of days, as time allows, I have added an additional 2.5 inches of depth to already-assembled 30-inch-square stretchers.

The strips I attached will give this painting a 4-inch depth, or “cradle,” allowing me to paint the sides. The design will wrap around the edges, which is a pretty cool effect. I produced a “proof of concept” a couple of weeks ago — the painting called Circuit (via my flickr page):

Circuit

Once I sanded the edges, I stapled poster board to the side, and sealed the seams with tape. This way, no surface variations will be present on the sides of the stretched canvas:

stretcher bars covered

This is the best alternative I know of for creating a deep-cradle painting. I have built my own deep-cradle “box canvases” before—with a panel of MDF mounted atop strips of wood. I primed these wood/MDF boxes, then painted over the priming. Problem is, those box canvases were heavy! And if I bumped or dropped them, the wood instantly dented.

Using canvas, however, the weight is reduced (cheaper to ship); there’s only limited potential for dings and dents; and there’s the benefit of a “tooth” to grab the paint ( = less brush strokes showing = more flatness).

That said, my goals for this week are to complete two of these paintings, both of which I will enter into an upcoming juried show. The first piece will be Circuit 2.0; the second will be Civvik 2.0 (a larger version of the painting below). Also I hope to produce a couple of works on paper. It will be a busy week!

Civvik

Also, I’ve started to write poetry again, for the first time in years. Not just in my head, but actually conveying the lines to paper. I do not know where this is coming from. But it feels like a good thing.

I have long harbored an idea to write a book called 2600 Poems by John Ashbery, which would neither have 2,600 poems, nor be written by John Ashbery. Quite possibly, these poems would land in that book, which ultimately might have a different title.

Poem titles I thought of last night:
1.) All of the Factors, Including the Fact That
2.) The Size and the Structure
3.) Cheer You Up with a Turkey Sandwich

Here’s the opening lines of “The Size and the Structure”:

More or less,
Things are becoming
More or less
Complex.

That’s the way I see it,
At least.

I’m not sure where to take the poem from here. It’s not much, but it’s a start. It’s all about incremental progress in 2009!

Back to work!

Wishing you happiness and the causes of happiness,
Grant

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Rock it fine in ‘09

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

The holidays have come and gone, and I look forward to getting back into the groove in ‘09. Hanging out and celebrating and all that has been fun, but now it is time to get back to business, as if there were no time to waste!

Amid the holiday downtime, I did find time to watch several episodes of the classic anime series Space Battleship Yamato (aka Starblazers). The first series was produced in 1974, and it offers hours of stellar outerspace illustrations and—my favorite part—mindblowing color combinations. I have found so much inspiration in this series. It is so completely outdated and anachronistic by contemporary standards, but I still find it amazing. And the background music for the first series is ineffably strange and beautiful.

The holidays also have allowed time to peruse a couple of books via Interlibrary Loan. One of them is Verner Panton: The Collected Works. Among the many things I admire about Panton, here are two:

1. Panton was trained as an architect, and he saw himself as a designer and architect. But I find this fascinating: According to the book’s introductory essay, “He regretted having brought so few buildings to completion and never having gained a real foothold in the profession he had trained for. To be sure, he made a number of starts. Panton occupied himself again and again with ideas for construction projects, he participated again and again in large architectural and urban development competitions, with considerable expenditure of time and energy—but he did not succeed even once.”

2. Panton is quoted as declaring “Color is more important than form.” While I truly love line, I find a transformative power—almost a chemical reaction—in combinations of color. I’d have to agree.

In closing, while I have written this before, I really do want to post to my blog with more frequency. Yet, I do find it difficult to find the time and energy. I don’t know why this is. Perhaps I should retroactively make “blogging more” my New Year’s resolution? If so, I guess I’m on my way to keeping it. Anyway, I welcome your ideas for blog posts.

Wishing you happiness and the causes of happiness in 2009,
Grant

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