Lebbeus Woods

http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/a-space-of-light-2/

Deviations

A page from my sketch book of initial research, when deciding on my "Big Idea".

Richard Dadd

Richard Dadd - The Fairy-Feller's Master Stroke (1864)

Goya

Goya - The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799)

This is a self-portrait etching of the Spanish artist Goya. Symbols of folly - the owls and ignorance - the bats, express the unleashing of imagination, emotions and nightmares. Goya states in his own notes on the piece "Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and origin of its marvels."

Gothic Art

Fuseli - The Nightmare

Gothic art is considered to be the kind of art that engages with ideas and themes discussed in Gothic literature. It is not necessarily in line with Gothic Architecture; this is because of the limited media in which Gothic artist worked - namely stained glass windows, not painting. Illuminated manuscripts, (mentioned in a previous post) are of this time, although many critics argue that the Byzantine informed this work. Meanwhile painting was progressing in a different direction, towards the classical ideal of the early Renaissance.

Therefore 'Gothic Art' is established in line with the Gothic literature of the time - "to respond similarly to the emphasis on reason and order during the enlightenment, and to move into the exploration of psychological states."

A major artist of this time was John Henry Fuseli whose art of strange dreams and visions - depicts troubled minds. "It was he who made real and visisble to us the vague and insubstantial phantoms which haunt like dim dreams the oppressed imagination" (New Monthly Magazine 1931 Jasper 1992: 105)

Thel

The eternal gate' terrific porter lifted the northern bar.
Thel entered in and saw the secrets of the land unknown.

She saw the couches of the dead, and where the fibrous roots

Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists -

A land of sorrows and of tears where never smile was seen.

She wandered in the land of clouds, through valleys dark, listening

Dolours and lamentations; waiting oft beside a dewy grave

She stood in silence, listening to the voices of the ground,

Till to her own grave plot she came.

William Blake

Thel (1789)

(4.1-9)

From

The Gothic. Punter, David and Byron Glennis, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford 2004