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In its raw state, playing off shape against
shapelessness is part and parcel of painting,
perhaps because it has been at the heart of all
advances since Palaeolithic cave paintings. David
Smyth's works remind us forcefully of it because
they present this confrontation without anecdote:
the shapes which we discern in "Venice" are
unidentifiable. In an "abstract" way, so to speak,
this opposition between shape and shapelessness
gives us something to think about. In fact, the
opposition is like some sort of duel where the one
cannot exist without the other. Both of them are
linked, both are mutually dependent on each other.
Today it could be said that David Smyth is one of
those leading us to a new interpretation of
Leonardo da Vinci's conviction that painters
should look for inspiration while contemplating, an
old wall, firing their imagination on the basis of a
shapeless surface. Da Vinci's advice to a young
painter was: "When you look at patches of colour
on walls or walls made out of different sorts of
stories, and you have to imagine a scene in front
of you, you will see different landscapes with
mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, great valleys
and groups of hills.You
will
also
detect battles and rapidly moving
figures, strange faces and looks, exotic
costumes and an infinite variety of things to
which you will be able to assign distinct and
well-formed shapes" (Carnets 11, p. 207). A BIAS TOWARDS THINGS David Smyth doesn't find countrysides, battle scenes or strange and exotic figures appearing on his "shapeless" backgrounds. In fact the things he sees are associated with our ordinary modern lifestyle. Using the |
technique of collage, he reminds us of things
we can see which inhabit and sometimes
Clutter upour daily lives. In "Fractures", we
can pick out a face and discern a female
body; we can try to decipher the words on
the torn up advertisements. Our perceptive
powers are always affected by our present
point of view and our memories, which is
necessary when confronted with a
world. There is also a sort of restlessness in David Smyth which wells up in his paintings. "Broadway" (1996) features a traffic sign, but it points "nowhere" or "anywhere". Likewise, in "A -Train" (1996), a means of Urban locomotion is en route for an unknown, unidentified destination. Here the artist picks on aspects of life in large modern cities, but cities which are like confusing labyrinths in which we might be threatened by an unidentifiable Minotaur. In other paintings David Smyth seems to want to fix our attention on urban movement, or rather on urban complexity, featuring a intricate play of colours, as in "Venice" (1995), "Turin" (1995), "Berlin" (1992), or even more explicitly in "Street Noises" (1993), thanks to its title. The "things" which David Smyth is biased towards cannot all be named.The "street noises" are evoked in the painting by repetitive small white rectangles scattered over a background dominated by reddish ochre. Everybody is free to imagine that every white rectangle stands for a car or a building. It doesn't really matter. Here David Smych is playing with the idea of "repeated perception" but this idea could be employed just as easily to describe all sorts of paintings which are said to be "abstract" because nothing in them relates to our concrete | ||
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