Principles at work
Looking deep into the visual structure of the aesthetic figure|FIELD to discern the hidden, practical supraformalist architectonic form-space lessons of Synthetic Cubism.
 
EMPTY|FULL: Lessons from Synthetic Cubism continued
 
In 1997 I  delivered a paper at the annual meeting of the ACSA (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture) called 7 Lessons of Painting for Architecture, in which I briefly discussed the Synthetic Cubist painting Still Life with Guitar by Juan Gris, 1917 (fig. 0.1, below), in terms of visual literacy.
 
I maintained, implicitly if not explicitly, as in other articles, such as Formalism: Move | Meaning2,  that visual literacy with respect to the language of painting and architecture, not unlike any other kind of language literacy (think natural languages like French, Russian, Chinese, etc.), requires special knowledge of an otherwise meaningless world. Otherwise it will always be a case of "it's Greek to me." "Eyes that are blind," is the way Le Corbusier put it. As with ear-training in the study of music, rigorous "eye-training," which is ultimately what visual literacy requires, is self-evidently crucial to the study of architecture and painting and to the development of aesthetic chops in all things visual. 
 
I've continued to look at this painting since writing that article, And I'd like to discuss several new discoveries here. Think of it as an ongoing attempt to undo visual illiteracy--my own as much as anyone else's.
 
0.1. Still Life with Guitar,  Juan Gris, 1917; Oil on canvas (28.25 x 36.25 in.)
0.2. Chess Moves, jef7rey HILDNER, 1996; Pasted paper on paper (9 x 6 in.)
0.3. The Poet, Pablo Picasso, 1911; Oil on canvas
 
Navigating a visual labyrinth
At first glance, even subsequent glances, the Gris painting is a visual labyrinth, a swirl of confusion. An enigma. Obstructive and off-putting--resisting translation more than inviting it. Unless, that is, one has a Theseus-like Ariadne thread that will allow you to enter the labyrinth, slay the Minotaur of confusion, and get out safely--empowered with a practical knowledge that will make the next labyrinth less forbidding. Unless, that is, one has a secret code-book of understanding for decoding the "text.". Although there are countless ways to "read" this painting, the reading that I've discovered is uniquely powerful and practical. I discovered it after many years of studying more elementary related exercises by Picasso and Braque, as I will explain, and looking for their practical application to my practice and teaching of architecture and painting.
 
For starters, compare the Gris to my Chess Moves collage (fig. 0.2, above) (I juxtapose them by way of a visual forward to the online version of 7 Lessons of Painting for Architecture).
 
The Gris is, after all---and this is crucial to understand---a painted "collage." It was produced five years after the amazing miracle year, 1912, when Braque and Picasso invented collage (French for "gluing"). A Synthetic Cubist still life, it rebuilds the infrastructure of the canvas in ways that approximate the complexity/density/difficulty of the paintings that mark the highpoint of Analytical Cubism in 1911, such as Picasso's The Poet (fig. 0.3, above).
 
My collage is structured not unlike the Gris with respect to the horizontal sub-partitioning of the field via the device of "split screen." (see "Deep Space/Shallow Space" by Thomas Schumacher; Architectural Review, January 1987, Volume CLXXXI, No. 1079, pp. 37-42). In both, at the approx. 2/3 point from the left, a vertical fault-line both separates and interconnects the deep space (left) from/to the shallow space (right) within the visual field. And while other aspects of structure are different in mine, both works share a proclivity for density in the middle. (Both have a dense jam-packed center.) Though mine has greater peripheral concentration (i.e., intensified activity at the edges due to greater centrifugal tension), while the Gris has a very real pyramidal pileup around the circle-in-the-square at the horizontal center of the painting, both could use a few pointers about the benefits of decongestion and rest. In other words, both are far from empty. Both are, almost bewilderingly, full.
 
LESSON 1  Negative Edge|Empty Center
 
But before tackling that theme head-on, let me please warm to my theme and ask you to first consider what one of the basic differences is between my collage and the Gris. Let's call this difference lesson 1.
 
1.1. Chess Moves, detail of top edge, jef7rey HILDNER, 1996; Pasted paper on paper (9 x 6 in.)
1.2. Still Life with Guitar,  detail of bottom edge, Juan Gris, 1917; Oil on canvas (28.25 x 36.25 in.)
 
Look at the edges of the visual field. The boundary-line. For example, compare the top periphery of my collage (fig. 1.1, above) to the bottom periphery of the Gris (fig. 1.2, above). In one (Gris), the world of the art work is isolated from the world outside its frame. In the other (mine), the two worlds are interconnected. In other words, the white space of the larger field in which my collage sits here on this page flows into it and vice versa. The figure of the collage and the field in which it sits are thereby, by virtue of the negative edge, interlocked. And this property is what makes the collage contingent, or circumstantial. Unlike the Gris, which is a pure rectangle, its interior shut off from what we could call the larger site because of its world-bounding frame, my collage is co-dependent with the surrounding "landscape" or "site."  You could think of it like a piece of a jig-saw puzzle. It isn't an autonomous entity. It's responsive to and dependent on adjacent relationships of the larger field and the irregular, idiosyncratic edge they mutually define.
 
Negative edges were important in the 1919 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Which you can see when stills are viwed on a black field, the visual situation in a dark theater.
 
 
Negative edges were also important to Mies van der Rohe at the 1929 Barcelona Pavilion (figs. 1.3 & 1.4, below), though, ironically, he by-and-large used idealized rectangular elements (roofs and walls) to achieve this end.
1.3. Barcelona Pavilion, aerial photo, Mies van der Rohe, 1929
1.4. Barcelona Pavilion, plan, Mies van der Rohe, 1929
1.5. Rhythms of a Russian Dance,  Theo van Doesburg, 1917; Oil on canvas
 
You might even say that negative edges were important to Theo van Doesburg in his 1918 Rhythms of a Russian Dance (fig. 1.5, above); if, that is, we see the boundary less literally (more phenomenally), and think of the white paint as an optical simulation of a physical erosion/deformation of the periphery. (The off-white mid-section at the bottom edge of the Gris (fig. 1.2, above) could also be read this way, as could another Gris, Chessboard, 1917 (fig. 4.2 below.) In other words, the physical edges of the canvas, its contours and shape, have not, like my collage, been altered by van Doesburg and Gris. But when viewed on a white field such as here, the white paint of the canvas and the white emptiness of the surrounding world-field merge into a dependent, interlocked structure.
 
There's another important lesson to be learned by comparing Mies's plan and the van Doesburg. In addition to their obvious affinity with respect to an aesthetic of rhythmic S, M, L, and XL linear elements that dance across their elongated, fundamentally rectangular fields, they differ as to an attitude towards the center. While they may share, to a degree, the property of negative edge, and while in each the S, M, L, XL empty (void) spaces that the structure of (solid) wall-like elements creates is just as important as the space-defining elements themselves, the van Doesburg presents a closed center while the Mies presents an open center. The forces of the van Doesburg are compressive, resulting in a constricted center more full of solid objects than empty space. The forces of the Mies, in which horizontal elongation and parallel-wall diagonality are intensified, are expansive. Empty space is primary. Solid linear elements are secondary. The van Doesburg, in which this primary/secondary relationship is reversed, seems to close down at the center, dominated as it is by the pinwheel structure of four almost intersecting long walls.
 
The polarity represented by these two form-space structures could be simply expressed this way: The center of the van Doesburg is full. The center of the Mies is empty. Moreover, the "center" of the Mies is more complex. Its center is not only at the spatially relaxed geometric mid-point of its implied rectangular frame. Its center is also the XL (empty) outdoor room that comprises the left half of the composition. On the one hand, in plan 97% of the field reads as empty--and it is: This is the feeling you have when you walk through the project (I visited last year: see article). On the other, the aerial photo shows that the relationship between the empty-full components of this sublime courtyard project is very beautifully divided between outside/inside space along a 70/30 split (70% empty/30% full). And it isn't that there's no roof over the outside space. It's simply that it's a negative roof. An atmospheric roof. A celestial flat plane. And whether you think of it as coplanar with the two solid roofs, or as vertically displaced up (infinitely) towards the heavens, the shape of this empty, negative roof is figurally codependent and interlocked with the adjacent full-elements of the larger field.
 
 
LESSON 2  Cut Figure|Contingent Field
 
Let's call them Cut Figures. That's what negative edges are. Jig-saw puzzle pieces in a larger, contingent figure|FIELD structure. This is the architectonic form-inventive, space-defining spirit that infuses the meta fact-world research of Picasso and Braque, and then Gris, after 1911.
2.01. Still life with a violin, Braque, 1912; [rotated 90 degrees CW]
2.02. Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper, Picasso, 1913; Pasted paper and ink on paper (18.5 x 25 in.)
2.03. The Violin, Juan Gris, 1916; Oil on canvas [rotated 90 degrees CCW]
 
Interlocked Cut Figures are at the heart of the construction of many of my paintings, drawings, and buildings.
 
 
Various works, jef7rey HILDNER, 1996-2000 [click to enlarge]
 
Always in tension with the suggestion or actual assertion of pure rectangular figures and fields (as in the Barcelona Pavilion), Interlocked Cut Figures are one way to give expression to the idea that architecture (or any visual structure) is not an autonomous enterprise but a fragment of a larger whole. A way of giving form to, as Meyer Schapiro put it, a "conception of the world as law-bound in the relation of simple elementary components, yet open, unbounded, and contingent as a whole."
 
2.04. The Breakfast Table, Juan Gris, 1915; Oil on canvas (36.25 x 28.25 in.)
2.05. SpaceWarp, jef7rey HILDNER, 2000; Digital Model
 
I haven't, as in my paper collage, reshaped the physical edges/boundaries of my canvases (yet). So in this way they function more like the Gris---ideal, autonomous rectangular fields. But I'm exploring the lessons of Negative Edges and Cut Figures within the interior of the paintings (and with greater freedom along the periphery in the 3D Modeling of buildings, as in fig. 2.05 above), This 1996 elevation, for example (2.06 below), by my UVA graduate student Patrick Magness was designed in accord with these principles.
2.06. Manhattan Jazz Museum (North Elevation), Patrick Magness (Studio Critic: jef7rey HILDNER), 1996; Ink on mylar (72  x 24 in.)
 
And in this way, too, most significantly, these works are also like the "Still life with Guitar" by Gris. Here's what I mean.
 
 Positive-Negative Spatial Moves
 
I've explained in other articles, including Transfiguring, that I learned how to think about highly articulated contingent interlocked cut-figure space-defining forms of the aesthetic field this way by studying the works of Synthetic Cubism. In addition to the 3 works by Braque, Picasso, and Gris shown above (figs. 2.01, 2.02, 2.03, above), I learned lessons from the very first pasted-paper collage, Braque's 1912 Fruit Dish and Glass, which I've written about in Collage Reading: Braque | Picasso (1996)---and, for example, from a subsequent pasted-paper collage, Violin, by Picasso, who obviously learned a thing or two from Braque in this regard.
 
2.07. Fruit Dish and Glass, George Braque, 1912; Pasted paper and charcoal on paper (31.5 x 17.5 in.)
2.08. Violin, Pablo Picasso, 1912; Pasted paper and charcoal on paper
2.09. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Pablo Picasso, 1907; Oil on canvas
2.10. Knight's Move _NYT: cut, separate, slide, jef7rey HILDNER, 1997; Pasted paper, pencil and gouache on paper (9 x 6 in.)
2.11. Maison Curutchet (Section), Le Corbusier, 1949
2.12. Gulf of Marseilles, Paul Cézanne, 1885; Oil on canvas
 
Braque's landmark project (fig. 2.07, above) sets the stage for deploying contingent forms as peripheral space-defining fragments of an empty center. The Picasso collage (fig. 2.08, above), which defines a more compressive empty center, is especially easy to read in terms of positive-negative reciprocal forms. Here's what I wrote about it in an article called Rooks Move about Bernard Tschumi's Student Center at Columbia University: "Picasso's Violin illustrates the simple device-sequence underlying what I call the Knight's Move---that is, figural diagonal displacement . Here, the two dark sepia shapes of text, idiosyncratic and contingent, are not only intercut and therefore codependent with the void of the white space around them (or, is the white space solid and the dark shapes void?), but they are also clearly intercontingent relative to each other: Imagine them as originally conjoined in the upper right corner, then cut apart and diagonally separated. The sequence of moves/devices Picasso implicitly employed is actually susceptible to even finer analysis by simply retracing the sequence in reverse and reuniting the two shapes or "chess pieces." For example, move the lower piece (the "knight") as follows: flip horizontally, slide up, move right, join. The original move, then, comprises four elementary devices in reverse: cut, slide, shift, flip." In Les Demoiselles d'Avignon: The 6th Woman and Transfigurative Space I pointed out how the origins of Picasso's moves in this 1912 collage and subsequent Synthetic Cubist experiments---in which the conscious calculation of reciprocal spatial-forms create powerful empty-full constructions---can be seen in his 1907 blockbuster (fig. 2.09, above).
My pasted-paper collage Knight's Move _NYT: cut, separate, slide (fig. 2.10, above) illustrates a similar, simpler sequence of diagonal displacement, involving the solid (p = positive) and the void (n = negative).  A similar diagonal-displacement move is made in this drawing (fig. 2.13, below) and orthogonal-displacement move in this painting (fig. 2.14, below):
   click to see full painting
2.13. Piero Abstract_, jef7rey HILDNER, 1997; Pencil and gouache
2.14. Rook's Move 3 _Urban Landscape, jef7rey HILDNER, 1997; Oil on canvas, detail
 
That Le Corbusier understood the figure/field lessons of collage is clear in the section (as well as in the plan and elevation) of this house.
  
2.14. Maison Curutchet, Le Corbusier, 1949; section sketch & diagram by the author
 
Through his negative-positive form making, Le Corbusier recomplicates the volume and enriches the inside/outside relationships of the house. In this 50/50 solid/void structure, the negative space is as equally figural and important as the positive forms. "Thus here, as in the pasted paper collages," I explain in Rooks Move, "perhaps the most significant act is the creation of the codependent space between, to which the rook's move is subservient. This in-between "space" may be either a solid or a void (in Le Corbusier's building it is a codependent void -- outside space; . . . ) and it may function ambiguously as much as a field as a figure. Ultimately, it manifests the properties of interconnection, such that, as with a jigsaw puzzle piece, it is simultaneously autonomous and a dynamic, contingent fragment of a larger whole."
 
The Fountainhead
 
"If only I were Cézanne," said Picasso. I think Le Corbusier would know what he meant. For sure enough, it seems that for origins of the modern idea of interlocking abstract Cut Figures in painting and architecture we can turn to the Father of Modern Art. In this painting, Gulf of Marseilles, Cezanne, 1985 (2.12 above & diagrams below), land and sea are interlocked as reciprocal 50/50 Cut Figures. It's an example of the radical manifesto expressed by Maurice Denis in 1890 that "a picture, before it is a warhorse, a naked woman, or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered by colors assembled in a certain order."
2.15. Gulf of Marseilles, Paul Cézanne, 1885; Oil on canvas  [Analytical diagrams by the author]
 
Similar plastic thinking is at work in the visual organization of Le Corbusier's Villla Shodhan:
2.16. Villla Shodhan, view of front elevation (stretched by the author), Le Corbusier , 195?; elevation sketch, diagram, and excerpts/reconstitutions of Cézanne fragments, by the author
 
Rudolph Schindler had a similar mind-set:
2.17. Mackey House, view of front elevation, Rudolph Schindler, (19?)
2.18. Fitzpatrick House, view of the living room (stretched by the author), Rudolph Schindler, 1937-38
 
 
Other systems
E + phenomenal transparency
On the other hand, here's an example, from my article Rooks Move, in which I discuss the difference between literal and phenomenal collage, where these principles are not employed:
2.19. Lerner Hall, Columbia University, New York City, view of north facade (photo and stretched version by the author), Bernard Tschumi, 1999
 
My diagram (left) shows that the basic organizing system of this three-part side-by-side building involves formal and material autonomy as opposed to figural contingency.  The other two diagrams show how the building might be reorganized if the principles I've been discussing, involving positive-negative Cut-Figure codependence, were employed.
2.20. Analytical diagram by the author of the non-Cut-Figure organizing principles of this project. Instead, the building is organized on the basis of Figural autonomy and centripetal containment (a trapped/book-ended center); it features side-by-side abutment of autonomous forms + isolated center tilting; 1. Short masonry mass; 2. Glass mass (enclosed ramps); 3. Tall masonry mass  [Analytical diagram by the author]
2.21 & 2.22. Analytical diagrams by the author of ALTERNATIVE STRATEGY: It features figural contingency and centrifugal expansion (a codependent "space between"); displacement, figure/field interlock + interwoven extended/peripheral tilting; MOVES = cut, separate/slide, pull through and wrap/fold the (left) corner
1. Rook Fragment; 2. Codependent Space Between; 3. Rook [Analytical diagrams by the author]
 
Shadowing Gris
The Cézannesque organizing principle of interlocking Cut Figures was crucial to the researches of Juan Gris. My unique take on his Synthetic Cubist paintings, as well as those of Braque and Picasso, has helped me unlock the deep content of their complex space-form structure.  This has enabled me, in turn, to develop a set of practical principles for analyzing and developing visual organizations, such as the Tschumi building above. Look how these principles are at work in Gris's 1917 "Guitar with still life," as seen in what I call the  Cut-Figure Shadow image of the guitar player (Guitar Man) in profile.
2.23 ---2.29. Deconstruction of Still Life with Guitar: Guitar Man, by jef7rey HILDNER with Trey Cook
 
These diagrams also identify the complimentary form of the interlocking female figure (as my Arlington graduate student Trey Cook has pointed out), who appears to be reclining mermaid-like on her stomach, face forward, legs extended diagonally into the z-axial distance to the left, as if she is resting comfortably on a sofa or daybed listening to the music. Thus, Guitar Man and Woman Listener are locked together along the principle vertical zigzag fault line of the painting--together, rather marvelously, they also define the shallow-space (right side/Him) and deep-space (left side/Her) of the painting,
 
2.30. Deconstruction of Still Life with Guitar: Guitar Man & Woman Listener, by jef7rey HILDNER with Try Cook
 
Moreover, when the male and female shapes are merged, additional interlocking solid-void readings appear (figs. 2.30 & 2.31). Ultimately, they may be seen as creating a powerful, circumstantially figural space between --- understandable as either plan or section  (for example, imagine the white space as the entry hall to a building). I write about this phenomenon in my article on Picasso's 1907 Demoiselles. (see "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon: The 6th Woman and Transfigurative Space").
 
 
 
2.31 & 2.32. Deconstruction of Still Life with Guitar: Guitar Man & Woman Listener,
by jef7rey HILDNER with Try Cook
2.33. Deconstruction of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, by jef7rey HILDNER
 
 
LESSON 3  Visual Archeology: Mapping Deep Void|Solid Structures
 
This is a good threshold for looking deeper into the Gris---and seeing that it is far more empty than it at first appears. These lessons in turn, together with the basic instruction on Negative Space that I describe in a related article called Significant Space, will then enable you to deconstruct a painting such as Picasso's 1921Three Musicians and see it anew.
3.0. Three Musicians, Pablo Picasso, 1921; Oil on canvas (67 x 73.25 in.)
 
By these principles we can reveal its  visual substructure, which is simultaneously complex and simple, defamiliar and dense---but beautifully lucid.
 
Moreover, these principles underscore the basis on which I differentiated between what I call literal collage and phenomenal collage in Rooks Move.  In a nutshell, Literal Collage is a device that essentially involves the juxtaposition of physical material; whereas Phenomenal Collage is a device that essentially involves the ambiguity & reciprocity of figure/field. positive form and equally figural negative space---the moves and counter-moves of empty|full.
 
Look first at this free-hand pencil drawing. It maps the white space-defining fragments of the Gris.
3.1: Deconstruction of Still Life with Guitar: White, by the author, 1997
3.2: Still Life with Guitar,  Juan Gris, 1917; Oil on canvas (28.25 x 36.25 in.)
 
. . . by which we see that if the white fragments are the solid (full), then the rest of the painting is rather generously void (empty). It is at once a map---a plan of a building and contiguous gardens/outdoor spaces. And a window---a building section that encloses interior space and frames the landscape beyond. In both cases (plan and section), the turbulence of negative edges, the cut-figure interlock of  idiosyncratic figural voids and figural solids, the infrastructure of localized centers within a matrix of forces that are enigmatically counterbalanced between the centripetal and centrifugal, reinforce the obvious circumstantiality of the enterprise. It is plastic and expressive. Unbounded. Free. Original.  
 
Mapping other component sub-systems of the painting (ochre, ochre & black, and green) reveals more of the underlying complex composition of Gris's remarkably literate, advanced form-space project.
 
3.3: Deconstruction of Still Life with Guitar: Ochre, by the author, 1997
3.4: Deconstruction of Still Life with Guitar: Ochre & Black, by the author, 1997
3.5: Deconstruction of Still Life with Guitar: Green-- inverted, by the author, 1997
 
Layer upon layer, Gris has constructed a profound archeology, He interlaces the components of the painting through the deployment of a sophisticated, complex music-like structure that echoes the narrative theme. Guitar with still life? How about frozen music. Like jazz, rigorous and relaxed, this painting writes out the chord structure, the rhythms and the melodic line, for the instruments of an avant-garde visual jazz septet.
 
The following diagrams, completed with the assistance of my graduate student Trey Crook at Arlington, take the project even farther. The wonders of digital technology (Adobe Photoshop) allow us to overlay various subsystems. There are over 1000 permutations, so the ones shown here only hint at the complex and rich Void|Solid structure of this painting, which is far deeper than you could ever at first imagine. These diagrams isolate ochre, white, and black; then combine black and ochre; black and white; black, white, and ochre.
 
3.6 - 3.11. Deconstruction of Still Life with Guitar: Isolations/Combinations of Black, White, Ochre, by jef7rey HILDNER with Trey Cook
 
The empty|full properties are especially clear and architectural (read as both plan and section) when the green fragments, which are gray-scaled, are isolated and stretched (fig. 3.12, below; see also 3.5 above). Satisfyingly, the forces are now more centrifugal than centripetal. Fig. 3.13 shows a gray-scaled diagram of the green and black fragments combined. The bottom diagram shows how morphing opens up many more possibilities for research: the black fragments (not including the photo-album like top corners) are inverted, stretched, vertically compressed.
 
3.12 - 3.14. Deconstruction of Still Life with Guitar: Isolations/Combinations of Black & Green (Gray-scaled & Stretched), by jef7rey HILDNER with Trey Cook
 
In other words, take the black fragments (fig. 3.6, above), erase the chamfered top corners and the circle/column in the center, stretch them, vertically compress them, vertically and horizontally flip them--and here's what you get (fig. 3.15, below): Abstract Linear Empty|Full Asymmetrical Centrifugal Tensions (ALEFACT) of an architectural Plan, Section, and/or Elevation. I am using reconfigurations/transfigurations such as this as the basis of my current design work.  This is how Synthetic Cubism is practical in architectural design, graphic design, painting, and visual criticism for me today.
 
3.15 (below). Deconstruction of Still Life with Guitar: Black morphed, by Jeffrey Hildner with Trey Cook
 
 

 

 
 

 

LESSON 4  Empty|Full Deconstructions: Extended
Here is a deconstructive look at other visual structures as seen through the Synthetic Cubist Empty|Full lens of my 2001 Arlington theory-seminar students:
 
4.1. The Musician, Georges Braque, 1917-1918; Oil on canvas (86.75 x 44.375 in.)
4.2. The Violin, Juan Gris, 1916; Oil on canvas
4.3. Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper, Pablo Picasso, 1913; Pasted paper and ink on paper (18.5 x 25 in.)
4.4. Chessboard, Juan Gris, 1917; Oil on canvas
4.5. Fruit, Dish, Glass, and Lemon Juan Gris, 1916; Oil on canvas (28.25 x 23.675 in.)
4.6. The Breakfast Table, Juan Gris, 1915; Oil on canvas (36.25 x 28.25 in.]
4.7. Three Musicians, Pablo Picasso, 1921; Oil on canvas (67 x 73.25 in.)
4.8. Une Petite Maison Mother's House, Lake of Geneva, Switzerland, Le Corbusier, 1923--24