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Lot Essay
In 1937, Gordon Onslow Ford travelled from England, where he had grown up, to France to pursue his artistic career. Although he trained as an officer in the British Royal Navy, Onslow Ford had long been interested in art, a passion shared by his family: His grandfather, the well-known sculptor Edward Onslow Ford, and his uncle Rudolph Onslow Ford, served as his first teachers. In Paris, Onslow Ford studied under Fernand Léger and met the artist Roberto Matta with whom he would go on to establish a creative partnership. The two painted together in Brittany, embracing the Surrealist idea of automatism, or spontaneous image making. As part of this process, Onslow Ford invented coulage, a method of pouring paint directly onto the canvas, which anticipated the work of Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists; colouage is derived from the French verb couler meaning ‘to flow’.
By the end of the 1930s, Onslow Ford was an established member of the Parisian Surrealists, but while they were intent upon representing the unconscious, he sought to depict ‘realities behind dreams,’ nurturing an interest in metaphysics and mystical philosophy in the hope of creating ‘images we haven’t seen before’ (G. Onslow Ford quoted in S. Muchnic, ‘Gordon Onslow Ford, 90; Painter Depicted Mystical ‘Inner Worlds’, Los Angeles Times, 17 November 2003, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-nov-17-me-ford17-story.html). Cycloptomania presents one such alternate world, emerging as it did out of the torrent of emotions Onslow Ford experienced upon learning that he would be recalled to the navy at the start of the Second World War. Indeed, it is a visceral amalgamation: The dotted lines signify the march of time, while the human-like form near the centre represents, according to Onslow Ford, a female holding the world as an egg. If Ford’s previous canvases had dealt with particular optical experiences, Cycloptomania instead ‘projects an ominous and sinister vision of violent acts and a rising chaos that threatens the central clarity’ (M. Sawin, ‘Gordon Onslow Ford,’ in Moderns in Mind, exh. cat., Artists Space, New York, 1986, p. 24).
While serving in the war, Onslow Ford was invited in 1940 to deliver a lecture series at the New School for Social Research on Surrealism, talks which profoundly influenced a generation of artists including Pollock and Robert Motherwell. Throughout his life, Onslow Ford remained an unflagging proponent of the movement that had so inspired him in his youth. Reflecting in the early 1990s on his long career, he said, ‘The painter can’t worry about what other people think, because it’s just distracting… The ideas, the insights come first. The matter – what you perceive – comes afterward. We’re still making our way around how we see the world. The way we have been taught isn’t very good, so we’re having to change that’ (G. Onslow Ford quoted in S. Muchnic, ‘ART : Still Cosmic After All These Years’, Los Angeles Times, 3 January 1993, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-01-03-ca-1073-story.html).
By the end of the 1930s, Onslow Ford was an established member of the Parisian Surrealists, but while they were intent upon representing the unconscious, he sought to depict ‘realities behind dreams,’ nurturing an interest in metaphysics and mystical philosophy in the hope of creating ‘images we haven’t seen before’ (G. Onslow Ford quoted in S. Muchnic, ‘Gordon Onslow Ford, 90; Painter Depicted Mystical ‘Inner Worlds’, Los Angeles Times, 17 November 2003, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-nov-17-me-ford17-story.html). Cycloptomania presents one such alternate world, emerging as it did out of the torrent of emotions Onslow Ford experienced upon learning that he would be recalled to the navy at the start of the Second World War. Indeed, it is a visceral amalgamation: The dotted lines signify the march of time, while the human-like form near the centre represents, according to Onslow Ford, a female holding the world as an egg. If Ford’s previous canvases had dealt with particular optical experiences, Cycloptomania instead ‘projects an ominous and sinister vision of violent acts and a rising chaos that threatens the central clarity’ (M. Sawin, ‘Gordon Onslow Ford,’ in Moderns in Mind, exh. cat., Artists Space, New York, 1986, p. 24).
While serving in the war, Onslow Ford was invited in 1940 to deliver a lecture series at the New School for Social Research on Surrealism, talks which profoundly influenced a generation of artists including Pollock and Robert Motherwell. Throughout his life, Onslow Ford remained an unflagging proponent of the movement that had so inspired him in his youth. Reflecting in the early 1990s on his long career, he said, ‘The painter can’t worry about what other people think, because it’s just distracting… The ideas, the insights come first. The matter – what you perceive – comes afterward. We’re still making our way around how we see the world. The way we have been taught isn’t very good, so we’re having to change that’ (G. Onslow Ford quoted in S. Muchnic, ‘ART : Still Cosmic After All These Years’, Los Angeles Times, 3 January 1993, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-01-03-ca-1073-story.html).