Essay by Michael Marlais
for the catalogue to the exhibition
"Dorothea Rockburne, Drawing: Structure and Curve"
October 21 - November 22, 1978
John Weber Gallery
New York, NY
Dorothea Rockburne’s art is cerebral, austere sometimes almost to the point of being ascetic, geometrically based, architectonically derived, molded along Classical principles, and deeply influenced by the painting and architecture of the Italian Quattrocento, and yet her works brilliantly succeed in becoming objects of great originality, beauty, purity of statement, and serenity, in becoming totems that comment critically and trenchantly on the New Baroque Age in which they were created, and in projecting through their skillful interplay of surface, textures, colors, and dominant sense of structurality a sensuousness paradoxically more than the sum of their rational and serial components.
Rockburne’s exhibition opening October 21, 1978, at the John Weber Gallery, New York, is the artist’s first individual exhibition in almost two years. The twenty-seven works on exhibition divide themselves into the serial parts of four overlapping, interrelated series. The Roman Series, made first, is constituted of seven works, numbered I through VII. The Vellum Curve Series, which followed, included eight works. These Golden Section structures are entitled Triangle, Square; Triangle, Rectangle, Square; Triangle, Rectangle, Small Square; Parallelogram, Diamond; Square Separated by Parallelogram; Parallelogram, Square; Parallelogram with Two Small Squares; and Rectangle, Square.
The Combination Series, based on elements and ideas of the two preceding series—hence its title—is made up of five pieces: Discourse, No. 15, Ambrogio, Descent, and Velar. The fourth series on view, but not the concluding series of these groups of interrelated works, the Arena Series, is based on the Roman Series and like that previous group is made up of seven works, numbered I through VII. Its title refers to the Arena (or Scrovegni) Chapel in Padua, Italy, which contains Giotto’s great fresco cycle. The artist plans to add an eighth work to the Roman Series, a corresponding eighth work to the Arena Series in order to bring to completion the five series of interrelated works that together make up a cycle of thirty-seven pieces. Rockburne has said that each of these thirty-seven works was firmly in mind before she began to work upon Roman Series I, and that the problems posed by each one had to be searched out as she created them.
The Roman Series supplies the formal groundwork for this vast cycle of thirty-seven related works. The varnished Kraft paper the artist utilized in fashioning this series is not new to her work, having been employed before in the fifteen or so works that make up the Copal Series of 1976. In that series she used Kraft paper, as she later did in the Roman Series, to work out the complex, formal structural relationships of these works. The basis of the Roman Series—and these structures were worked out with the purpose firmly in mind of later having to be able to carry the colored pencil arcs employed in the Arena Series. These first works had to be capable of being read together structurally so that later they could exist as paintings.
A close look at the Roman Series tells a great deal about Rockburne’s working methods. For her, the essence of creation lies not in the making of a new and different object but in the creation of a completely new experience. Her work evolves slowly out of its own creative cycle. An experience is created, and later it is assimilated to be used in creating other new experiences. The complexity of RockburneÕs art necessitates that the artist becomes familiar with each facet of her work in its own terms because each of these facetsÑstructure, color, line, transparencyÑinfers all of the others, and all of the inferences must be worked out in the combinations that compose her work. Thus, Rockburne is led to a deep concentration on each of her workÕs component elements, a concentration on the essence of each that must be handled simultaneously. An elementÕs isolated quality of essence must be allowed to work in conjunction with the influences of the essences of the other elements in order that the artist can achieve artistic truth.
Because an understanding of the Roman Series is, to some extent, enhanced by a knowledge of Rockburne’s previous work with the Golden Section, let us briefly review some of her work with that proportion. The Golden Section is a method of dividing a line so that the lesser of the two sections stands in relationship to the greater as the greater does to the sum of both. This proportion was used by the architects of ancient Greece, who thought it a perfect way to divide a line. A Golden Rectangle is formed by using the two parts of a Golden Section, and it also was extensively employed by the Greeks. The façade of the Parthenon, for example, fits perfectly into a Golden Rectangle. The Golden Section was also widely employed by Italian painters and architects of the Late Middle Ages and of the Early Renaissance. It is in the work of Italian artists of the Quattrocento that the Golden Section has been most studied by Rockburne.
Rockburne, however, has always employed the Golden Section not as a subject but as a tool. One of its properties that appeals to her most strongly has to do with its mathematical proportions. Here is a good place to say a word or two about Rockburne’s relationship to mathematics. Although the artist has said she knows little of mathematics, her deep affinity for the subject has led her to read consistently in it. When she professes ignorance she means that she views mathematics as a humanist does, as an artist does, and not as a scientist. One reason mathematics interests her is because it is full of surprising correspondences—of the sort that Amédée Ozenfant noted in Foundations of Modern Art when he wondered if the number of infinitely small atomic particles in the universe might be equal to the number of stars. Another reason mathematics interests Rockburne is because it makes her think of philosophical analogies. One of its aspects that makes the Golden Section so fascinating to Rockburne is the correspondences it suggests—for example, the musical chord that seems most satisfying to the ear—the major sixth—vibrates at a ratio that approximates the Golden Section. This same ratio is equal to the relationship between any two numbers of the Fibonacci numbering system, invented by a thirteenth-century Italian mathematician. In turn, the Fibonacci numbering system is the basis for such diverse "systems" as the spiral patterns in certain types of pine cones and the spiral shells of certain sea creatures. All of these correspondences fascinate the artist, and she has said that © Michael Marlais working with the proportions of the Golden Section is magical for her. The proportions give the magic as she puts them together. Another appeal of the Golden Section for Rockburne is the fascination that it has held for important painters and architects throughout the history of Western art. It provides for her art an historical link to the works created by these past masters and craftsmen.
Rockburne’s use of the Golden Section goes back to the Golden Section Paintings, a series of eight structures, five of which were shown in the exhibition entitled "Eight Contemporary Artists" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from October 1974 to January 1975. Each of these eight works was composed from a sheet of linen made up of a Golden Rectangle and the square from which it was derived. The process of deriving a Golden Rectangle from a square by using chalk plumb lines was widely employed by Italian panel and fresco painters of the Quattrocento, and Rockburne used the same technique as evidenced by the blue chalk lines in these paintings. The open sheets of linen were gessoed on one side and varnished on the other, again both practices having been employed by Italian panel painters. Then the linen was cut and folded along some of the blue chalk lines in order to arrive at the eight original Golden Section Paintings configurations.
Rockburne’s Robe Series, exhibited at the John Weber Gallery, New York, in an exhibition entitled "Working with the Golden Section, 1974-76," furnishes an additional example of her concern with the Golden Section and with Italian panel painting. The four works that constitute this series were each made from a Golden Rectangle and its precedent square, but in this series two of the original configurations were combined (in the Roman Series as many as five of the original configurations are combined). The four works in this series were, however, painted on their gessoed side, each one in four or five colors. The colors, as well as the titles of these works—Noli Me Tangere, The Descent, The Discourse and Sepulcro—again refer to Quattrocento panel painting. The complex structural relationships of these pieces, as in the works that make up the Roman Series, were first worked out in Kraft paper.
Keeping all of these considerations in mind, it is now possible to return to the works of the Roman Series. Structure, as we have said, is the essential and underlying concern of these works, but what kind of structure? The answer lies in a series of five drawings composed of photographs mounted by Rockburne in 1974 under the title "In Consideration of the Curve." The photographs for these works, made in and around Florence, have as their subject Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance buildings, and each one focuses on the same architectural feature: the curve. The supporting arches of the Ponte Vecchio, the delicate molding framing the windows of palazzi, the sweeping arc of the buildings lining the central piazza in Siena, the vaults of several of the Medici villas in the hills outside Florence—all these and many other architectural details were investigated under the general heading of a study of the curve in architecture. In essence these drawings using photographs served as studies for the four series now on exhibition.
This does not, however, mean that one finds in the Roman Series a group of curved Golden Section paintings. Here one discovers the beginning of the idea, the containment in essence of it, and one must look to the works that make up the Arena Series in order to find its culminating vision. The works of the Roman Series can be seen as being meant to contain curves, of having something of the structural essence of curves in them. The artist has stated that getting the structure of the cycle established in the works of the Roman Series was the most difficult task she faced in all these pieces. These structures served as guidelines for their later transformations and translations.
Let us consider Roman Series II. It is at once the most conservative, the most contained of the Roman Series structures. It has nowhere near the extension of such a work as Roman Series VII, but what it does have is a contained sense of spiraling movement. This movement begins with the small square, the most static shape in the work, static not only because of its wholeness but also because of its Classical horizontal and vertical alignment. The movement goes from this square, aided by the blue diagonal line of the square, into the upper point of the rectangle above the square. It is precipitated by a brilliant series of triangles that begins in the rectangle and ends in the lower square. The whole might be described in terms of a "C" shape, beginning and ending in the centers of the two squares. This compositional movement is reflected in the geometrical relationships between the various shapes that make up the work. For instance, the side of the upper square is equal to the short side of the upper rectangle, which is, by the way, a Golden Rectangle. The diagonal of that rectangle is equal to the side of the upper triangle that forms the lower left side. This las triangle is reflected in another similar triangle that ends with its lower right-hand corner in the center of the lower square. Finally, the center of the lower square marks the Golden Section of the line that extends from the far left corner of the work to the lower right corner. The relationships that make up this work—one wants to call them magical—are Classical. The basis of the rational "C" shape, the basis of the contained, spiraling movement, lies in the work’s perfect geometrical relationships. In other works in this series in which the geometrical relationships between shapes are less evident there is a consequent lessening of containment and opening up of the structure.
To move from a consideration of one work, Roman Series II, in the Roman Series to an understanding and appreciation of the series as an entity, one must come to grips with Rockburne’s use of set theory. The artist’s early work had to do with set theory, and Rockburne has said that one of the most interesting things about set theory is the similarities and dissimilarities among the members that make up the set. Rockburne has used set theory as a method of organizing her thoughts and her work since 1969 or 1970. She works in series because a study of the similarities and differences between things and the relationships thus engendered helps her to identify the essence of those things and because working in this manner is embedded in her way of seeing things.
What are some of the similarities between the seven pieces that currently constitue the Roman Series? They are all made out of the same material, they are all based on combinations of Rockburne’s original Golden Section configurations, and they all deal with both sides of the paper they employ. Moreover, each of the pieces projects a definite sense of ambiguity: one can not tell which is the inside, which the outside. Another feature that each of these works shares is its sense of movement, and it is in this aspect that we can see their individual relationship to the curve. To a greater or lesser degree, each of the works in the Roman Series is involved with a different kind of visual movement, a movement that varies from the tight "C" curve of Roman Series II to the long, slow, curving rhythms of Roman Series VII. Finally, it must be pointed out that all of these works are heavily charged with emotion, in some cases proportioned and calm and in others convoluted, dense, and verging on the Mannerist.
What important differences make the works that compose the Roman Series distinctive? First and foremost, each one of these pieces was fashioned from one of the many possible combinations of the elements of the Golden Section. Because every possible combination of these elements works in a different way for the artist, the choice of one, a different one, for each work marks a distinguishing feature of primary importance. The second important dissimilarity among the works that make up the Roman Series is based on one of their similarities. Their different employment of visual movement (a dissimilar feature) stems from their serial use of it (a similar feature).
The Vellum Curve Series, which followed the Roman Series, was a step toward the Combination Series and, with it, a step toward the Combination Series and, with it, a step toward the Arena Series. All three series employ vellum paper and colored pencil arcs, and the history of the artist’s use of both arcs and vellum paper is worth touching upon.
Rockburne first used a drawn arc in her work in the 1972-73 series, Drawing Which Makes Itself, a group of about ten pieces. one of the works in that series, Arc was composed of a large sheet of double-faced carbon paper and three lines drawn on a wall. The artist folded the rectangular carbon paper in such a way that the fold became the diagonal of the largest square that could be created from the rectangle. The upper straight line in Arc was made by flipping the carbon paper over and by drawing along the diagonal fold. The lower line was drawn by rotating the carbon slightly on its lower right-hand corner from this new position and by drawing along the short side of the rectangle. Finally, the arc was drawn by continuing this rotation. The physical steps involved in making this work can, in essence, be retraced by the viewer. In many of the early works in the series, this retracing was possible, but as the works moved from simpler to more complex forms this became difficult and then impossible. Arc, however, was the only work in this series in which the artist employed a curved line.
Rockburne first used vellum paper in a 1973 work, Neighborhood. Like Arc, Neighborhood formed part of the series Drawing Which Makes Itself, but unlike Arc it was concerned with the see-through properties of vellum paper and employed colored pencil lines. These two features are, of course, incorporated in the works that make up the Vellum Curve Series. Neighborhood was also dissimilar from Arc in that it is not possible to retrace the steps involved in its creation. Although the lines in this piece derive from a logical process of folding, flipping, and unfolding the paper, some of the steps were not delineated and thus the whole process cannot be retraced. From Neighborhood onward the artist eased to show any interest in making her work available for mental reconstruction by the viewer. The steps in its creation—although based on logical systems—can no longer be reconstructed.
Prior to the works in the Vellum curve Series, Rockburne made one other work incorporating vellum paper, Gradient and Fields II, exhibited at the John Weber Gallery, New York, in September 1977. This work was a reconstruction of a 1971 piece, Gradient and Fields I, and the significant fact about the newer piece in regard to the Vellum Curve Series is that the reconstruction was done in terms of the see-through properties of vellum paper.
The eight works that make up the Vellum Curve Series are, quite simply, the eight origiinal structures of the Golden Section Paintings executed in a different material, in vellum paper rather than in linen. In addition, in each of the new works the artist had inscribed a colored pencil circle into the square from which the Golden Rectangle has been derived and a colored pencil ellipse into the the Golden Rectangle itself. The lines that inicate the steps in deriving the Golden Rectangle from the square have also been indicated in colored pencil, though these lines are much thinner than the curved lines. The vellum paper was varnished on one side in order to indicate, as the artist has stated, "both sides of the paper and to facilitate its transparency." Thus the works that have resulted possess a discriminating sense of nuanced color and texture. The vellum paper picks up some of the coloring of the pencil lines and gives off subtle reflections of these colors.
By limiting herself in the Vellum Curve Series to her original Golden Section configurations, Rockburne was able to concentrate her efforts in a new direction. The theme of this series is color and line and the relationship of each to structure. Each of the original Golden Section structures becomes identified with a particular set of arcs and of colors.
Let us first consider the function of line. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the colored pencil circles and ellipses is that the additional complexity they provide in the works serves to clarify the structure of Rockburne’s original Golden Section configurations rather than to make them more obscure. For example, Parallelogram, Diamond is a perfectly symmetrical form, balanced on both sides of its central horizontal and vertical axes. As a consequence, the curves formed by the inscribed circle and ellipse are also perfectly symmetrical, and they form a series of curves arcing away from the center until they go through the vellum paper halfway to the sides of the structure. Let us compare this structure with the more unbalanced, dynamic structure of Square Separated by Parallelogram, a two-layered piece. Here the dynamic quality of the structure is reflected in the asymmetrical relationships of the colored pencil arcs.
After this brief consideration of the function of line in the Vellum Curve Series, let us turn our attention to the function of color. It is very difficult to say exactly why the particular colors employed in each of these works—three different color for each of these eight pieces of the series—are so perfectly appropriate to each form. Why, for example, has the artist considered purple, true green, and copper appropriate for Triangle, Rectangle, Square? The form of this work is basically static except for the rectangle at its top right. This shape draws the viewer’s attention away from the center of the work. Certainly, the purple are inscribed in this rectangle helps to describe visually the movement away from the center. The direction of the lines does this, but the color makes it more emphatic. The purple, accented by the true green that has been used for the lines of the Golden Section structure, serves to further the movement of that section away from the rest of the work. At the same time, the copper lines of the lower section function to hold that part more firmly in its stationary immobility. Thus the color in this work can be seen to support its structure.
Rockburne’s sense of color, like that of such great colorists as Georges Seurat and Henri Mattise, is both personal and innate and at the same time the result of study and experimentation. Rockburne has been much influenced in this area by Italian painters of the Late Middle Ages and of the Renaissance. After studying Jacopo Pontormo’s fresco cycle in the Church of San Miniato al Monte, Florence, several years ago and the same artist’s frescoes in the villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano, she decided that she too would attempt to work in very pale colors, in colors that did not hold the color area, such as sand, pale blues, pinks, light oranges, and chromatic browns. However, after experimentation with these color, Rockburne decided that they did not relate to her own sense of color, and she then turned to a color group that is denser and fuller, including canary yellow, bice green, Tuscan red, vermilion, copper, umber, and cobalt blue. Another influence on her color sensibility has been the frescoes of Giotto in the Arena Chapel.
The five works that make up the Combination Series are each a combination of two works of the Vellum Curve Series. Rockburne made the works in this series in order to deal with the complexities arising from additional color, shape, and structure. Like the works in the other series, the pieces in this one are the result of the artistÕs focusing on the characteristics engendered by the combinations. In No. 15, for example, Rockburne combined two works from the Vellum Curve Series directly adjacent to each other on opposite sides of the central horizontal axis of the work. In essence the combination is two-dimensional. In Velar, on the other hand, the combination is one in depth, for in this case the artist knitted or wove together two Vellum Curve Series, so here too the color serves to clarify the new structures rather than to obscure them—or perhaps one should say one aspect of the new structures has been clarified by the color and that another has been made more complex and thus less clear. In looking at the works in the Vellum Curve Series the viewer gradually came to identify certain colors and arcs with certain forms (in the same manner that certain colors and shapes help the viewer to pick out important elements in Giotto’s frescoes in the Arena Chapel). After these forms of the Vellum Curve Series have been combined in the works of the Combination Series, the colors—especially when seen through the vellum paper—help the viewer to identify those works that have been combined. But the added elements of color and transparency have a life of their own in these works. They posit a new dimension, and they increase the complexity of the work. Rockburne’s art is one of complexity, not however for its own sake, but because through it she moves to new and different considerations.
The works of the Combination Series are much concerned with layering. The physical layering of materials has been a distinctive feature of Rockburne’s work for many years, but the various layers of her folded works become most evident when she employs vellum paper. The essence of the structure of these works is in the layers, and the viewer perceives these layers as carrying information, as being "informed". The physical information they carry, however, is only a parallel to the various layers of experience, sensibility, and information that make up the artist’s mind. Rockburne transfers her internal self into these external layers, and each piece of her works carries the sum of the multilayered knowledge, experiences, and emotions that the artist has amassed during her lifetime. Thus the physical structures she builds closely correspond to the personal structures that created them. Inside becomes outside, internal becomes external. In this way vellum paper speaks eloquently for the artist’s mental and emotional makeup. The fact that vellum paper is an ancient material for making art appeals to Rockburne, and she thus uses it with a full sense of its history while employing it in a new way. It contains in its history a reference to the past (including a reference to the artist’s own past work) and a reference to the present in the manner in which she employs it, all the while that it also deals in physical terms with the problems and processes of layering.
The transparency of vellum paper is certainly a central feature in the works that make up the Combination Series. The viewer is continually fascinated by the ways in which the curves meet each other through the translucent surface of the paper. The interactions between colored pencil curves and the paper itself must be viewed in several different kinds of light in order to be completely experienced as the marvels they are. In addition, the varnished side of the vellum paper constantly reminds the viewer that paper has two sides, both of which can be fully exploited by the artist. Moreover, the very thickness or thinness of the paper becomes a factor in these works as the viewer notices how the vellum paper actually bends the light—the arcs in these works are not only those drawn in colored pencils. It must be pointed out, too, that the bending of light in these works is an achievement not shared by the pieces in either the Golden Section Paintings or the Robe Series. Here Rockburne has captured the feel of the drapery folds in Giotto’s frescoes in the Arena Chapel, and it might be recalled in this context that it was Rockburne’s desire to do the drapery folds in Italian painting without actually depicting them that was a prime motivation for her interest in folding linen and vellum paper. It might also be added here that Rockburne for many years has been interested in early parchment works and linen wrappings, and she finds that when these items are in fragments or tatters that they arouse her interest to the greatest degree.
The seven works that constitute the Arena Series bring together all the features employed in the precedent series. A worked-out structure, layering, set theory, the Golden Section, historical references to the art of the past, color—all of these and other considerations have gone into the careful preparation of the finely understated works of art that constitute this series. Each of the members of this series is a new investigation of the structures formulated in the Roman Series. Here, however, the artist has excluded certain parts of the originals in order to achieve these completely new and different works. For example, Rockburne has not used an inscribed circle or ellipse in every member of the Arena Series (just as she did not in every member of the Combination Series). She has chosen, in fact, only those parts of the circles and ellipses that provide a new and important color experience.
Although the works that make up the Combination Series were derived from members of the Vellum Curve Series, and although this is the case with the members of the Arena Series, the look here is completely new not only because the members of the Arena Series combine more of the Vellum Curve Series parts than do the Combination Series but also because the dynamic forms of the Roman Series, used here again, are so different from the stable forms of the Vellum Curve Series. From these familiar forms totally new structures and objects have been derived. But the members of the Arena Series do, however, share many features with its antecedent series.
Like those in the Vellum Curve Series and in the Combination Series, the arcs in the members of the Arena Series serve to identify the structure of their forms. In Arena Series I, for instance, the colored arcs indicate that the two rectangles on its left-hand side are not the same. Yet these two arcs do echo each other, both in their opposed, sweeping curves and in their employment of two different reds. The Roman Series version of this structure seems to be more stable than its Arena Series counterpart. It is a thing of the dark, a Romanesque structure, as compared to a thing of the light, a Gothic structure. In Roman Series I an opposition was set up between the stable form of the two rectangles and the highly unstable forms at the lower right. Arena Series I enables the viewer to see that gentle flowing of curving lines from the lower right out to the opposite corner of the work.
Roman Series III and Roman Series IV might, at first glance, seem to be related structures. But their counterparts, Arena Series III and Arena Series IV, show how totally different the structures and characters of these two earlier works are, and at the same time the later works reveal a similarity between their two antecedents. Both of the later works are dominated by an upward swinging "S" curve that runs from the lower left to the upper right of each. This type of formal information occurs throughout the works of the Arena Series, and it forms the core of the subject of the series just as it figures as the core of all of Rockburne’s work. This is not to say, however, that formal relationships are the sole raison d’être of her art but only that they are developed in her work to the point that her art becomes more than the sum total of these formal concerns. This statement can, perhaps, be illuminated by looking once again at that "S" curve in Arena Series III and in Arena Series IV.
This "S" curve can serve as a metaphor for much of Rockburne’s art. So often in her work either a form or a shape or a color appears, disappears, then reappears in an altered, though recognizable, manifestation. This type of displacement can teach the viewer much about the elements involved in the artist’s work. Literally, something new has been created out of known and recognizable elements. If the viewer takes note of this technique of repeated displacement and if he recognizes the differences and the similarities in each instance, then he can begin to understand the essential character of each particular quality involved. For example, the curved line has certain features in one piece and totally different features in another. The similarities between the employment of it in the two pieces show the viewer what the curve is and the differences indicate what it is not. This process leads to an understanding of the nature of the formal elements involved. By the same method the viewer can begin to understand the nature of the experience that the work provides.
In January 1978 when a steam pipe broke in her New York loft and destroyed all seven of the pieces that then constituted the Roman Series, Rockburne courageously began to remake, to recreate these works. But, in order to investigate the structures further, the artist made them over in a different size. The first group had been based on a fifteen-inch square, but the second series was executed on an eighteen-inch square, a small but noticeable difference.

In Rockburne’s original notes for the Arena Series project, she wrote:

I always seem to have a vision in my eyes and in my head. Realizing this vision is the joy of working and living. So even though the work, even after certain choices, seems to be following a plan (or theory)—the real look of the work is in my head. Obtaining this vision is why the work is so slow in becoming.

Thus Rockburne creates her art in order to realize a personal and intuitive vision, and she exhibits her work in order to communicate that vision, that part of herself that she rightly feels forms a part of humanity, to the viewer. What, then, is the vision that RockburneÕs art projects?

The best that can be said in this connection is simply that the works of the Arena Series contain Rockburne’s vision in the same form that her mind first contained it. The artist is extremely careful and magically skillful in transferring, in translating that vision into visual data. Although the complexity of her art comments in oblique way on humankind and the world, and although its qualities at different times project purity, serenity, and sensuousness, as well as historically based resonances on the art of the past and of the present, perhaps it is safest to say that her vision is contained within the techniques and materials employed in the realization of her art, one that is truly an abstraction.
© Michael Marlais