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拍品專文
Majestic and vibrant, Eyes of the Dove: Lucifer Life, is large scale painting from 1959 by American painter Paul Jenkins. From of the artist’s most celebrated series entitled Eyes of the Dove, the work presents an symphonic array of form and colour: swathes of fiery crimson and sunglow yellow fill the canvas, interrupted by palimpsests of cerulean blue and soft cream white. Jenkins’ Eyes of the Dove series, begun in 1958, was inspired by a story from art critic Harold Rosenberg, as the artist has explained: ‘[he] spoke to me about a Jewish rabbi who used to visit different synagogues. He would stand on the topmost step and he would then come down one step and say: ‘The eyes of the dove,’ and then go into a kind of revelatory explanation in words of religious experience. When he completed that he would step down and go into another transport. He was greatly admired and followed. I thought to myself, Yes, the eyes of the dove, they see everything but never the same thing twice.’ (P. Jenkins, quoted in A. Elsen, Paul Jenkins, New York 1975, p. 65)
Moving beyond the two-dimensional plane of the canvas, Eyes of the Dove: Lucifer Life appears to seep beyond its boundaries. For Jenkins, the very canvas itself plays a key role in his practice. As the artist as elaborated: ‘When people ask me if I make a drawing before a painting, or do I have an idea before starting a picture, I point out that the very size of the canvas dictates to me. A blank canvas gives me a clue. In the series Eyes of the Dove...I discovered that one painting might seem to contract and concentrate, fold into itself. But another might appear to expand beyond its boundaries. All achieved a difference in scale. My eye measured a reality which had nothing to do with the arbitrary scale of the yardstick.’ (P. Jenkins, quoted in A. Elsen, Paul Jenkins, New York 1975, p. 65).
Eyes of the Dove: Lucifer Life was produced in a similar fashion to contemporary Jackson Pollack’s method: unstretched and placed horizontally on the floor. In contrast, Jenkins creates poured shapes, gullies and valleys formed with structural intention. As Jenkins once explained: ‘Sometimes, I would take up the corner of the canvas and staple it to a box, a table leg or wall... so that when I poured I would get defined veils.’ (P. Jenkins, quoted in A. Elsen, Paul Jenkins, New York 1975, p. 66). Within Eyes of the Dove: Lucifer Life, one can see the remnants of action, the constant build up and scrape down until the artist found a form, lending itself to a deep and
penetrating energy.
Moving beyond the two-dimensional plane of the canvas, Eyes of the Dove: Lucifer Life appears to seep beyond its boundaries. For Jenkins, the very canvas itself plays a key role in his practice. As the artist as elaborated: ‘When people ask me if I make a drawing before a painting, or do I have an idea before starting a picture, I point out that the very size of the canvas dictates to me. A blank canvas gives me a clue. In the series Eyes of the Dove...I discovered that one painting might seem to contract and concentrate, fold into itself. But another might appear to expand beyond its boundaries. All achieved a difference in scale. My eye measured a reality which had nothing to do with the arbitrary scale of the yardstick.’ (P. Jenkins, quoted in A. Elsen, Paul Jenkins, New York 1975, p. 65).
Eyes of the Dove: Lucifer Life was produced in a similar fashion to contemporary Jackson Pollack’s method: unstretched and placed horizontally on the floor. In contrast, Jenkins creates poured shapes, gullies and valleys formed with structural intention. As Jenkins once explained: ‘Sometimes, I would take up the corner of the canvas and staple it to a box, a table leg or wall... so that when I poured I would get defined veils.’ (P. Jenkins, quoted in A. Elsen, Paul Jenkins, New York 1975, p. 66). Within Eyes of the Dove: Lucifer Life, one can see the remnants of action, the constant build up and scrape down until the artist found a form, lending itself to a deep and
penetrating energy.