Chapter 13 - Take three artists

Fig.1: Herta Puls

Herta Puls
Herta Puls was born in Germany in 1915, moving to England in 1939. Here she studied embroidery and textile design at the Newport College of Art, the West of England College of Art in Bristol and the London College of Fashion. She was a member of the 62 Group of Textile Artists, the Practical Study Group and the Quilters Guild and Textile Society.

Fascinated by the embroidery of Panama whilst visiting the San Blas Islands in that area, she has written two books - the Art of Cut Work and Applique and Textiles of the Kuna Indians of Panama. The needlework of the Kuna tribes was based on traditional body painting, with stitched versions appearing in the late 19th century. The word 'mola' means cloth, clothing, or blouse and these reverse applique panels usually form the front and back panels of a woman's clothing.

Traditional designs are generally geometric, abstract or based on nature - fish, birds and the sun, all of which have spiritual significance to the indigenous people. The quality of a mola is determined by the number of layers, usually up to five, and the fineness of the stitching, with the very best examples having stitches which are practically invisible.

Herta's inspiration for her own versions comes from nature and from sketches made on her travels to Panama, India, Thailand and Indonesia as well as to the Americas. This kind of work features in this module in the chapters on reverse applique and, having now attempted this for myself, I am in total awe of the skills of Herta and the Panamian ladies who make the most amazingly intricate designs.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mola_(art_form)

Fig 2: Wassily Kandinsky

"Colour is a power which directly influences the soul"

Wassily Kandinsky
Kandinsky was born in 1866 in Moscow where he initially studied law and economics before moving to Munich where he studied art, going on to teach at the Bauhaus School of Art and Architecture for a period of some eleven years. Shortly before the outbreak of the second world war he moved to France where he lived for the remainder of his life.

From very early in his artistic career he saw parallels between music and painting, often using musical terms to describe his art. He said that colour was the keyboard, the eyes the harmonies and the soul was the piano with many strings. He saw the artist as the hand that plays, touching one key then another to cause vibrations in the soul. He claimed that when he saw colour he heard music with tone of colour being the timbre, hue as pitch and colour saturation as volume.

His fascination with colour symbolism was a constant in his life and his art, his paintings containing swathes of bright colours and, initially at least, recognisable forms of buildings and seascapes. By the early 20th century, however, his paintings had become increasingly abstract with shapes being over-laid to create depth.

Many of his abstract works from the 1920s incorporate crosses, as in the image at bottom right of Fig. 2 above, entitled simply 'White' and in this way his work relates to the themes of this module, as does his use of colour. I also feel that many of his paintings would easily lend themselves to interpretation in applique and stitch.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky

 Fig. 3: Chuck Close

Fig. 4: Chuck Close continued

Chuck Close

Chuck Close was born in America in 1940 and, due to severe dyslexia, which severely affected his academic life, he turned to art, encouraged by his artistic parents. Close credits his prosopagnosia (face blindness) for his decision to paint portraits, thus enabling him to better remember faces.

Using a process which he described as 'knitting', he took large format Polaroid photographs of his models which he then recreated on canvas. His huge portraits are formed by placing a grid on the photograph and on the canvas, and then copying cell by cell. Each square on the grid is filled with rough circles of colour which, when viewed from a distance give a rough approximation of the colour on the original.

Having been to an exhibition of his work in London a couple of years ago I was totally 'blown away' by the intricacy of his methodology and by the fact that such a fragmented image when viewed close up can produce such realism when viewed from a distance. His art is even more impressive when you realise that in 1988 Close suffered a massive seizure which left him paralysed from the neck down. Physiotherapy has returned some movement to his arms and legs though he is still largely confined to a wheelchair and produces his huge pixelated portraits by pivoting the canvas and with a device strapped to his wrist and forearm to hold his brush (see photograph at bottom of Fig.3 of the artist at work).

He also makes wall-size tapestry portraits where the image is made up of endless combinations of woven threads in a myriad of colours. His work is relevant to the module due to its fragmented nature, which can be argued to represent the disintegration of the whole portrait into individual pixels, and also his use of vivid colours, which when viewed from a distance actually look very realistic.

Refs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Close

www.pacegallery.com/artists/80/chuck-close