20 Small Works
& the Alice Walls at the Barbican
by Gillian Wise
Artist’s book
2011
16×22 cm
76 colour pages
printed in France
ISBN 978-2-9520119-1-4
design: Alexander Wise
My aim in producing this survey of my twenty small works – produced between 1963 and 2011 – is to regenerate interest in an approach to abstract art which derives from the 20th century Modern Movement. In this way I hope to reassert Modernist concepts and values. I have been a member of two related avant-garde English groups in the 1960s and 70s - the Constructionists and the Systems group - which espoused the Euiropean Modern Movement approach in terms of its rationality, the interaction of art, architecture and design, the use of non-traditional materials and egalitarian social reform. Regrettably, these values have been largely swept aside by the growing American dominance of the Western art scene following the promotion of abstract expressionism in the early 1950s and the subsequent global commodification of the art market, regardless of the quality of the art. In my own case, however, I have continued firmly to resist these influences and to develop what might be described as a Modernist “aesthetic equation”.
Through this booklet I also aim to bring my work and ideas to the attention of the Japanese and Chinese art world – recognising in part the current shift in economic power and cultural influence from the West towards Asia. While I was in Leningrad in 1969/70 studying Russian Constructivism I became aware of Chinese interest in Soviet Realism which forcibly replaced the original Russian constructivist avant-garde. Now, I hope it will be of interest to the Chinese to see work which continues in the tradition immediately preceding Realism in the USSR, and in its Modern Movement form was developed across Europe in later years. In Japan, there has also been a significant and continuing interest in International Style architecture and Modernist design – to which my work and ideas directly relate.
Regardless of dates and materials, these twenty small works fall into two general categories which frequently overlap. The first I describe as “cosmic/architectonic”, and involves alphabets of relationships. The geometry of light on forms and colours is indicated via aesthetic senses, with geometric forms being used in a variety of ways. A good large scale example is my mural in the staircase for the main cinema of the Barbican Arts Centre in London, constructed in 1982. Titled “The Alice Walls”, it incorporates colour planes and mirrors and extends over three floors and two walls. One might call this first approach the geometry of visual phenomena – light-reflective colour interaction within a controlled set of relationships, with geometry as the skeleton or framework.
The second category involves systematic arrays of forms (particularly squares) as the key underpinning of the work, in line with he pioneer European and Russian avant-gardists who stressed a return to the basic geometric unit as a building block. This was new to Modernism, but had its roots in Cezanne’s analysis of basic structure. Later, the Bauhaus and the design school at Ulm organized this concept academically. The thinking was based on craft experiments, involving a high level of geometry in which the Swiss also excelled. To be effective, perception of this work needs to be by an educated eye – which is rare, as teaching and understanding of this approach has largely been dropped by current academic institutions. So today, a full appreciation of this work tends to be in the hands of a few artists and connoisseurs, who can soon demonstrate the ability, if they have to, through analysis of each other’s work. I hope this booklet will encourage others to develop their own skills of perception.
Gillian Wise
English artist resident in Paris
Former member of the British Constructivist group