.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
Like an arrested propeller blade spinning about a marbled black axis, Untitled is an unusual example of Sam Francis's distinctive colour field style on paper mounted on board. Painted in [X], Untitled, signals a paradigm shift in the artist's practice from his angular, 'grid' style of the late 1970s, towards his more cloud-like, globular forms of the 1980s that melt and morph into a shimmering network of jewel-like colour.
Radiating out from the centre to the right of the painting spidery magenta lines delicately dance between emerald drops, punctuated by lemon drizzles, culminating in a burst of fiery orange that spills over the paper's edge onto the snowy board beneath. The acrylic paint used is created by Francis's own paint mixer who works with high concentrations of colour pigment so as to heighten their impact through their light reflecting qualities and subtlety of hue. The way that the paint drips and trickles down the paper's surface evokes Francis's formative training in watercolour whilst burgeoning forms of colour appear to swell and grow on the paper as though living organisms. Indeed, the question of life has played a central role throughout the artist's oeuvre particularly after Francis had a debilitating accident in 1943 that confined him to a hospital bed for months on end. Lying on his back unable to move, Francis became transfixed by the kaleidoscopic patterns created by the ebb and flow of pools of light across his ceiling and became inspired to communicate these visions in his painting. James Johnson Sweeney has observed, 'what most interested him was the quality of light itself not just the play of light, but the substance from which light is made' (J. J. Sweeney, quoted in P. Selz, Sam Francis, New York, 1982, p. 34).
Having immersed himself in Jungian analysis during the 1970s, with an assured confidence throughout the 1980s Francis used paper to investigate formal and even archetypal structures born from his study of Jung. Fascinated not only by Jungian processes of individuation, a method of self-discovery, Francis was also absorbed in Jung's reading of alchemy. Thus the artist's comprehension of painting came to encompass the ancient elements of earth, water, air and fire, where fire and air gives birth to colour - the real force in nature. Whilst colour for the artist had always been a vehicle for conveying emotion, it now took on the power of nature itself as is evidenced in the present work.
Radiating out from the centre to the right of the painting spidery magenta lines delicately dance between emerald drops, punctuated by lemon drizzles, culminating in a burst of fiery orange that spills over the paper's edge onto the snowy board beneath. The acrylic paint used is created by Francis's own paint mixer who works with high concentrations of colour pigment so as to heighten their impact through their light reflecting qualities and subtlety of hue. The way that the paint drips and trickles down the paper's surface evokes Francis's formative training in watercolour whilst burgeoning forms of colour appear to swell and grow on the paper as though living organisms. Indeed, the question of life has played a central role throughout the artist's oeuvre particularly after Francis had a debilitating accident in 1943 that confined him to a hospital bed for months on end. Lying on his back unable to move, Francis became transfixed by the kaleidoscopic patterns created by the ebb and flow of pools of light across his ceiling and became inspired to communicate these visions in his painting. James Johnson Sweeney has observed, 'what most interested him was the quality of light itself not just the play of light, but the substance from which light is made' (J. J. Sweeney, quoted in P. Selz, Sam Francis, New York, 1982, p. 34).
Having immersed himself in Jungian analysis during the 1970s, with an assured confidence throughout the 1980s Francis used paper to investigate formal and even archetypal structures born from his study of Jung. Fascinated not only by Jungian processes of individuation, a method of self-discovery, Francis was also absorbed in Jung's reading of alchemy. Thus the artist's comprehension of painting came to encompass the ancient elements of earth, water, air and fire, where fire and air gives birth to colour - the real force in nature. Whilst colour for the artist had always been a vehicle for conveying emotion, it now took on the power of nature itself as is evidenced in the present work.