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Lot Essay
Christie's Specialist, Angus Granlund in conversation with Antony Donaldson, October 2015.
AG: The first thing that strikes me about this painting is the colour or lack of it. This focuses the viewer’s attention on the subject matter but can it also be seen as a reaction to the bright pallets of your fellow Pop artists?
AD: In 1963 Bryan Robertson called and asked me to exhibit in a new show he was organising to be called the New Generation. He told me what it was about. Every painter would show four paintings and shortly afterwards he told me who else would be showing. Thinking about the other artists and their use of colour, I decided to paint four black and white paintings for their impact. So I started on this series which took me much longer than I thought, so when Bryan telephoned and said he needed photographs for reproduction in the catalogue I realised that I could not finish them in time so I sent in four other new paintings.
AG: Am I right in thinking that this is one of only three black and white canvases that you painted on this scale?
AD: Yes, the other two are Bring it to Jerome and It won’t be long, but there were a lot of trials on paper and a small painting on board of a fourth image called That’ll be the day.
AG: The titles are typically ambiguous. Where does Rushes come from?
AD: The unedited film rushes that would be screened at the end of a day’s filming, it seemed appropriate.
AG: The composition of Rushes is more simplified than the other works in this series. Some of the lines are left to the viewer’s imagination rather than drawn in and you don’t use the painted dots that you do in the other three. I love the effect, it’s like an over-exposed photograph.
AD: As I worked on it the painting became more simplified. Images always develop, you just do not know how when you start.
AG: You developed your own unique application of painted dots that was differed from your contemporaries such as Lichenstein and Laing.
AD: Lichtenstein used Ben-Day dots straight from comics to produce say pink from red dots on white while Gerald Laing used what in fact were halftone dots, really straight from how we see newspaper images when they are blown up. I used them as a third colour. The first trial in this series used black, grey and white but that did not work, in fact using dots as the third colour made the surface more lively.
AG: The monochromatic pallet and non-concentric diamond shapes in Rushes recall some of the Op Art that was emerging at this time. How aware of this were you?
AD: I wasn’t really aware of Op Art as a term, it wasn’t until a year later that the movement started to take shape with major exhibitions in New York. When you look at my paintings in this particular series and around this time you see different ways of fading and the use of geometric devices to bring the surface together. Also I was using what could loosely be called a spray gun for the first time. Just a devise attached to the back of a Hoover blowing the wrong way. Not a very precise way but it did begin to mix the colours on the canvas.
AG: Rushes is also unusual in that the model adopts two different poses, whereas you choose to repeat the images in the other paintings in this series and at this time.
AD: I just found two images of the same girl and they really worked together, like it was the same image but she had moved.
AG: Considered by many to be one of your most important paintings, why do you think Rushes is such an enduring image?
AD: I don’t really know as it has been out of circulation for so long. It left England in 1966 and hasn’t been seen here since. But I think it reproduces well and at the time the Black and White Paintings struck a note of simplicity, which still appears to resonate today.
AG: The first thing that strikes me about this painting is the colour or lack of it. This focuses the viewer’s attention on the subject matter but can it also be seen as a reaction to the bright pallets of your fellow Pop artists?
AD: In 1963 Bryan Robertson called and asked me to exhibit in a new show he was organising to be called the New Generation. He told me what it was about. Every painter would show four paintings and shortly afterwards he told me who else would be showing. Thinking about the other artists and their use of colour, I decided to paint four black and white paintings for their impact. So I started on this series which took me much longer than I thought, so when Bryan telephoned and said he needed photographs for reproduction in the catalogue I realised that I could not finish them in time so I sent in four other new paintings.
AG: Am I right in thinking that this is one of only three black and white canvases that you painted on this scale?
AD: Yes, the other two are Bring it to Jerome and It won’t be long, but there were a lot of trials on paper and a small painting on board of a fourth image called That’ll be the day.
AG: The titles are typically ambiguous. Where does Rushes come from?
AD: The unedited film rushes that would be screened at the end of a day’s filming, it seemed appropriate.
AG: The composition of Rushes is more simplified than the other works in this series. Some of the lines are left to the viewer’s imagination rather than drawn in and you don’t use the painted dots that you do in the other three. I love the effect, it’s like an over-exposed photograph.
AD: As I worked on it the painting became more simplified. Images always develop, you just do not know how when you start.
AG: You developed your own unique application of painted dots that was differed from your contemporaries such as Lichenstein and Laing.
AD: Lichtenstein used Ben-Day dots straight from comics to produce say pink from red dots on white while Gerald Laing used what in fact were halftone dots, really straight from how we see newspaper images when they are blown up. I used them as a third colour. The first trial in this series used black, grey and white but that did not work, in fact using dots as the third colour made the surface more lively.
AG: The monochromatic pallet and non-concentric diamond shapes in Rushes recall some of the Op Art that was emerging at this time. How aware of this were you?
AD: I wasn’t really aware of Op Art as a term, it wasn’t until a year later that the movement started to take shape with major exhibitions in New York. When you look at my paintings in this particular series and around this time you see different ways of fading and the use of geometric devices to bring the surface together. Also I was using what could loosely be called a spray gun for the first time. Just a devise attached to the back of a Hoover blowing the wrong way. Not a very precise way but it did begin to mix the colours on the canvas.
AG: Rushes is also unusual in that the model adopts two different poses, whereas you choose to repeat the images in the other paintings in this series and at this time.
AD: I just found two images of the same girl and they really worked together, like it was the same image but she had moved.
AG: Considered by many to be one of your most important paintings, why do you think Rushes is such an enduring image?
AD: I don’t really know as it has been out of circulation for so long. It left England in 1966 and hasn’t been seen here since. But I think it reproduces well and at the time the Black and White Paintings struck a note of simplicity, which still appears to resonate today.