Lot 183: iamb, Chapter 12

R.H. Quaytman (b. 1961) iamb, Chapter 12 signed, titled and dated ‘R.H. Quaytman Chapter 12, Iamb, 2008’ (on the reverse) silkscreen inks and gesso on wood 20 x 32 3/8 in. (50.8 x 82.2 cm.) Executed in 2008.

50.8 x 82.2 cm.

London, Vilma Gold, Joseph Strau and R.H. Quaytman, December 2007-January 2008.

R.H. Quatman, Spine, Berlin, 2011, p. 208 (illustrated).

Vilma Gold, London Acquired from the above by the present owner

“Despite my frequent use of photography, the digital, and printmaking techniques, I use the name 'painting' to describe what I do. I make paintings in the hope that the following two ideas may be activated: (1) attention, whether from a gaze or a glance, can be contained, reflected, and distracted; (2) that the paintings will correspond to the ever-changing temporal, spatial, and contextual conditions of their placement” (R. H. Quaytman, Spine, New York 2011, front cover). In iamb, Chapter 12, R. H. Quaytman draws inspiration from the properties of light and vision, particularly the idea of a blind spot within the visual field, to meditate on the impossibility of truly “capturing” an image. When one looks at a painting, one naturally tries to identify and interpret the imagery one sees. These instinctive ocular and mental processes are complicated when an artist creates a work that purposefully negates the act of comprehension, an issue that Quaytman confronts in this painting. In iamb, Chapter 12, Quaytman has silkscreened an allover grid pattern onto a wooden panel. Quaytman’s hypnotic design is comprised of infinitesimal black rectangles interspersed with vivid rectangles of pink, purple, and blue. The bright, horizontally striated colors, evoking the shades of a sunset, initially draw the viewer into the painting. A closer examination of the surface reveals the minute, repeated rectangular grid of colors with which the image is comprised. Quaytman’s process of silkscreening serial imagery recalls Andy Warhol’s method, and her use of a small grid pattern visible only at close range is reminiscent of the painted Ben-Day dots in a Roy Lichtenstein painting. Quaytman also works within the tradition of Op Art, as her use of color and repeated small rectangles imbues her work with the impression of movement. The optical illusion created by the contrasting black and colored rectangular squares enlivens the surface of the wood panel with the illusion of shimmering, pulsating colors. Quaytman titled her iamb series after John Milton’s Paradise Lost, a poem written in iambic pentameter. Just as stressed and unstressed syllables alternate in a foot of verse written in the iambic meter, rectangular fields of different colors fluctuate on the surface of iamb: Chapter 12. There is an undeniably poetic aspect to the harmonious manner in which her shapes and colors coalesce into a constantly changing whole. Quaytman chooses to work with the illusionistic grid pattern “specifically because it was invented to address how neural vision works laterally in the receptive field--the way I want my paintings to work” (R. H. Quaytman, Spine, New York 2011, p. 165). The way the painting looks is purely dependent upon the distance and angle at which the viewer looks at it. As the viewer changes position, the work itself appears to change, and leaves the viewer with no standard impression. The artist composes her paintings to appear blurred and unfocused to replicate the experience of an afterimage lingering in the eyes of her viewers (Ibid., 165). The colors, which seem to fade from bottom to top, and the visual effect of blurriness caused by the hypnotically repetitive grid, create the illusion that the work is fading before the viewer’s eyes, even as the viewer gazes upon it. The viewer can never visually master the work; it can never be brought into focus. iamb, Chapter 12 reflects “the ever-changing temporal, spatial, and contextual conditions” in which it is placed, but also of the times in which we live (Ibid., front cover). Quaytman’s fascination with memory and time is reflected in this work, which, in spite of the grid-like pattern on which it is based, resolutely resists uniformity. Encouraging infinite impressions on the part of the viewer, iamb, Chapter 12 reveals that no painting is ever fixed in time or space, and no “true” image can ever be captured.