Patrick Caulfield's innovative approach to colour

by Gwen Herat

Patrick Caulfield's innovative approach to colour and composition was developed the moment he started painting professionally. He had to identify where his art was heading and be focussed on a singular theme.

He explored a range of emotional responses as he experimented upon their combinations with recognisable forms fragmented to abstraction. And, there was no looking back.

Being a leading artist of his generation, Caulfield had very little competition from his contemporaries. He re-invigorated traditional genres such as still life or object drawing.

After coming into prominence in the mid-1960s he became associated with pop art but found that was not what art lovers expect from a traditional painter and weaned himself off to look at himself as a formal artist.

He studied at the Royal College of Art and through his participation at the Whitechapel Gallery, London in 1964, he was focused on pop music which he dropped off no sooner he began. He was greatly influenced by the traditions of earlier continental artists such as Georges Baraque, Juan Gris and Fernad Leger. Experts say there is a semblance of their art in his.

Outlines

He was a bit strange, quiet removed from many because his paintings were characterised by flat area of colour with objects defined by simple outlines. As he gained more experience, he combined different artistic styles to create highly complex paintings that played with definitions of reality and artifice.

Highly engaged with subtle shift in subject matter to topics directly engaged with cintemporary landscape and the representation of modern life. This type of attitude remained central to his art for the rest of his life.

Several of his paintings made a direct reference to compositional devices found in the carefully constructed still life of the cubist painter, Juan Gris. Caulfield was so carried away by his work that resulted in the Portrait of Juan Gris in 1963.

This is one of the very few images he made of a figure which was done on board

and hangs Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. He also began working with a large format, presenting flat, linear images of everyday objects upon empty settings.

Rather queer, I thought. However, with simple background of flat colour, he developed his signature use of graphic black outlines to create pictorial depth. He was also a lover of buildings and structures and focussed on their interiors. This made him to admire the American painter, Edward Hopper whose frozen quality of time in his interiors.

In the 70s he explored the language of painting that combined different styles of representation within the same work.

The coll precision of his earlier paintings were subverted and became highly realistic. To him it was like an ‘alien’ style which contrasted with his own and subtly complicated the definitions of interior and exterior.

He played with conventions of taste and kitsch because much of the scenes suggested deserted transient pleasure. He was not concerned of its overall effect that later was to have an unpleasant effect on his paintings.

Instead, he was very logical with the space provided for structural painting. Those are the moments that he appeared eccentric. But throughout his career his interior scenes revealed different forms and sources and used their validity to suggest human presence.

He became increasingly involved in creating his own sharp divisions with simple brushwork devices.

The intensity of his colour separation baffled the senior painters of his time who found it difficult to understand in which direction he was taking British art after he commenced abstracts and fragments in compositions.

It took a long time for British critics to give him their nod. Yet they were not sure whether if was an abstractist or a cubist. But he was very insistent about his colour combinations that were restricted two or three to paint a large canvas. He never adapted any source of imagery from reproductions.

Art history was foreign to him. The flashes of arabesque colours in his brain, rotated and revolved long enough to put them on canvas. There was no romance, no poetry nor music in his brush strokes. They were brusque, hard and at times a strain on eyes.

But how did Caulfield survive to climb the ladder of British art? Perhaps his disregard for convention and a chip on his shoulder that he carried negatively towards his contemporaries who failed to gain popularity or the critics on to their side.

Patrick Caulfield was born in 1936 and died in 2005.