Ok, wait for it *drum roll*….for my next trick I present to you ladies and gentlemen, the third and final part of the aforementioned triptych which is entitled ‘Canvas Three’. Once the limbs and head were removed, it looked to me like some kind of garment, so I just hung it up like a shop window display.
Martin and I were talking the other day about square and landscape formats, and how there is less of a space in a square frame for a narrative. The eye isn’t taken on a large compositional journey, but is forced to make connections in a narrower space – perhaps to climb into it as one would a poem. Who knows, but I do love a square format, there is something certain and deliberate about the square. The rectangle is less sure of itself. When Roger Hargreaves made Mr Strong, he chose a square, not a rectangle. Point proven. (Insert image of Mr Strong in your mind’s eye. The internet wouldn’t let me poach one. I can see it’s point, but it has ruined mine!)
It’s really strange, but the doll’s torso, doesn’t look like a baby’s. It looks like a pregnant woman’s. Only the big holes for the legs, give any hint it was supposed to be a baby.
I like squares and cubes. Possibly explains my penchant for IKEA and Braque.
Not sure the rectangle is less certain – consider the Golden Rectangle and the Golden Mean and all that. Definitely true that there is a quite different psychic energy to a square though. Especially one so loaded.
Yes Roses – Martin thought it looked like a pregnant woman too. It just points up to the over-all ambiguity of dolls’ bodies. I will put a poem up later which I am reminded of now.
I was thinking of the Golden Mean, and the sonnet shape when I was writing about Mr Strong, Brett. But even Don Paterson calls the sonnet a ‘small square poem’, not a small rectangular poem though, in his intro to 101 Sonnets – despite talking at length about the golden section. Hmmm…
Interesting about shape, although I always see the circle as the strongest shape, no corners where stress and weakness gathers. It is also somehow the most organic of shapes whereas the square never occurs in anture it is the essential epitome of man structuring the environment. I find it interesting that the Muller-Lyer illusion does not work on some African and South American tribes where the visual and concept of a corner has never been available to them..they often even live in round houses. So I think in choosing the square juxtaposed with the doll parts is really significant and you have hit on something quite crucial. The artifical attempt to almost parody in plastic the human child body and placing this within a shape that is the ultimate artifical construct of line in space somehow speak to each other.
I love the idea of a world without corners, despite my penchant for squares. Squares are about containment, aren’t they. I even doodle squares. I think for me they are a way of making sense. It’s also an odd womblike idea in this particular context.
this one is somehow more horrible than the others – it might be because the torso almost look pregnant!
Yes, it’s oddly ambiguous. We think we know what dolls look like, but we really don’t!
Those pink and white colours, so fresh, so innocent. Like the parody of an anatomical exhibit: doll’s hospital version! …
S’my fave …
Thank you Sue. It was the one I had to do least with, so it felt a bit like cheating!