The final look at Moonstrips here is at the pattern-rich picture prints, six of them
below:
It would be difficult to overrate the value of
pattern in artistic practice. It enables
the creation of visual harmonies, symmetry and rhythms. These can be highly instrumental in manipulating
the viewer’s mood, (usually towards calmness), as well as their visual
experience. And, where a pattern is
interrupted/disturbed, a sense of unease can be evoked.
Pattern helps establish order and solidity – in
traditional painting think for example of how Vermeer’s tiled floors underpin
the 3D effect of his interiors. In
modern art, where there is no concern with perspective, pattern has often been
used to ground and integrate disparate imagery within a single painting/print –
this is a technique of Paolozzi’s. His
chequers and squares and stripes slosh about on a print like the stock of a
soup in which the diverse chunks of pictures/words can be seen and appreciated
as part of something which overall is more appealing than the individual
ingredients.
Whilst the use of pattern for integrating purposes
is so notable in prints such as A formula
that can shatter into a million glass bullets
in the Universal Electronic Vacuum
suite:
that portfolio also included continuous pattern images
such as Memory Matrix, (below), similar to
those seen in Moonstrips.
Paolozzi collected patterns as raw materials for
his collages – as he did all sorts of images/objects – from a vast range of
sources: food boxes, sweet wrappers, crochet
patterns, engineering drawings, etc. It
is pleasing to see that these often mundane visual devices live on beyond their
original context in some of the very best artworks of the mid-Twentieth Century.
%2B'The%2BWindmills'%2Bhe%2Bmurmured.jpg)
