Square Rotation 9
2005
Pencil on paper.
406 x 406 mm (16 x 16 inches).
Literature: Alan Reynolds, Circling the Square, Reliefs, Drawings and Prints, exh. cat. 27 April - 27 May 2006, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, cat. no. 26 illus..
Newmarket 1926 ~
In the late 1950s, Alan Reynolds moved away from the great tradition of English landscape painting towards a considerably more formal style. His very natural renditions of blowing grasses and trailing moss, often segregated on each sketchbook page into their own small, squared spaces, were to be replaced by a rigid geometric discipline; European Constructivism had taken over. By the mid 1960s all natural representation had gone, and by 1967 constructed reliefs became his preferred medium. Colour and curve were slowly eliminated in favour of white planes described by the fall of light and shade. Reynolds saw his 'concrete' approach as bringing order and humanity to a world sorely in need of both. His thinking was influenced by Hans (Jean) Arp who wrote in 1944 that 'concrete art is a basic art, a sane and natural art'.1
Alan Reynolds at eighty is as painstaking as ever. His working method involves the use of Rives paper laid down on card. The drawing is then measured and sketched on the paper before the shading begins with an H pencil. This pencil is held in such a manner that the individual strokes are always visible on the page. This method of making reliefs followed that of his shaded drawings.
Our drawing is one of a set begun in 2003 using rotation for the first time. Reynolds had touched on this idea before. There are rotational forces in his early landscapes in the form of the cycles of day and night and in the seasons, with their radiating suns and thistle or dandelion clocks. Here the square format is still divisible into horizontal or vertical halves. Now, however, it is further divided into four identical quarters as well. As these quarters rotate, our reading of them changes - elements separate and recombine in new configurations. Regarding these disceptively effortless compositions, Michael Harrison of Kettle's Yard notes that, "It is through this simple (in concept) - though not so simple (in realisation) - disposition and tuning of width and tone, and, in the white reliefs, of width and depth, that Alan Reynolds discovers equilibrium and sanity in revolution".2
1. Michael Harrison in Alan Reynolds, Circling the Square, Reliefs, Drawings and Prints, exh. cat. 27 April - 27 May 2006, London.
2. M. Harrison, op.cit.
