On Repeat - Esther

As decorative elements go, there is surely a pattern to suit everyone’s tastes. Regularities of shape & colour are satisfying, speaking to our need for order & making sense of the world. A well-placed pattern suggests rhythm & harmony & geometric shapes are often key in pattern design for instance in furnishings, furniture or fabric. We can be lulled into calm and peace by dependable pattern. 

Conversely, the eye can be fooled in many ways & sometimes the patterns can trick us into seeing something else, such as the trend for a time of “magic eye” artworks. Apart from being migraine-inducing, I often couldn’t see the “hidden” thing in these pictures & when I could, the cross-eyed confusion they left me with meant it wasn’t entirely worth the effort.

Pause (Bridget Riley)

The Op Art movement is the clearest example of mind-bending & eye-watering use of pattern, so much so that they are solely abstract. Op Art works are cleverly designed optical illusions calculated to deceive the viewer into “seeing” movement, wiggling, spinning, pulsing or flashing. These “vibrations” are created with careful use of colour & shape. Bridget Riley (1931-) is perhaps the movement’s best & best-known practitioner. Through Riley, we see how Op Art was influenced by Pointillism before it, the use of colour & pattern repetition in order to trick the eye into making sense of colour & shape placed deliberately together.

Movement in Squares (Bridget Riley)

Often a pattern is inspired by the natural world, perhaps none more so in the art world than William Morris (1834-1896). His interest in decorative arts prompted his foundation of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co, a group that arose from a shared philosophy about the state of the fine arts in the UK, as well as the radically altruistic belief that art was for everyone. He designed the interiors of his own home & was a key influence in the Arts & Crafts movement which endeavoured to eliminate elitism in the arts & make visual arts accessible & inclusive. 

Acanthus Tiles (William Morris)

His 1862 Design for Trellis Wallpaper shows not only his great talent for producing high quality decorative & illustrative works & a mathematical understanding of what was involved, but also a little of his process. The detail is so fine, the painting so accomplished that no matter what your opinion of the Arts & Crafts artists & their work (terrifically variable in my opinion), in his capable hands it was a worthwhile enterprise.

Art photography has in recent times frequently utilised the innate tessellation & repetition in nature & the mathematical arrangements of its forms & structures in themselves often make for beautiful image-making. Often these come in the form of abstract images or close-ups. Eliot Porter’s (1901-1990) photographs may not always show regular patterns but the repetition present he finds in the natural world are nevertheless beautiful & fulfilling. In the case of Foxtail Grass there is more than a touch of the William Morris.

How important is regularity of repetition to your appreciation of pattern? For instance, Yayoi Kusama’s (1929-) work may have the geometry of the circle on its side, but it is certainly scattered & sometimes chaotic. Just because the size & scattering aren’t consistent doesn’t mean her compositions lack beauty or system. Personally I find them immensely gratifying (particularly in her indoor installations) & her use of colour contributes to the overall sense of unity & infinity.

In Infinity (Yayoi Kusama)

As a young person, I first had the sense of the value of pattern in fine art from the work of Gustav Klimt (1862-1918). As well as the visual appeal, the shapes & patterns had symbolic meanings which struck me as terrifically profound at the time. For example, the concept of shapes denoting male & female shook me as much as the idea that pattern & decoration had any sort of place in fine art, other than in the dreaded applied arts. Rather than his portraits, often of women encased within a cluster of decorative geometric shapes, it is Klimt’s allegorical & conceptual, less figurative paintings that seem to make more natural use of symbolic patterning. 

Medicine (Detail), (Gustav Klimt)

It is very striking to consider his frankly academic art training & subsequent early works up against what he later turned out. How did he arrive at such abstraction of the natural world & heavy pattern work as a such an important element in his later works? Doubtless the death of both his father & younger brother in 1892 provoked his more unique artistic imaginings. Klimt’s work placed heavily explicit significance on the history of art & decoration in the form of the Ancient Egyptian influence he wore on his flouncy smock sleeve & as the son of a gold engraver, it is touching to think of his own personal journey being evoked in his works through his ornamental use of gold…

Perhaps the title of master of all patterning in fine art belongs to Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972). His legacy too suffered the lack of recognition & appreciation experienced by the Arts & Crafts artists from the established art world much of which remains elitist & needlessly sniffy. Yet, he had a clear, obsessive & intensive art practice, influenced by the Moorish architecture & tiling of the Alhambra & La Mezquita. 

Mural Mosaic in the Alhambra (M.C. Escher)

Development II (M.C. Escher)

To say his mathematical works were too academic or analytical as opposed to narrative or expressive is to wilfully ignore the deeply conceptual aspects of change, flow & eternity contained within them. Successfully combining art, geometry & nature in ways no-one else has fully achieved since, Escher’s patterning work & images were for some time welcomed in the maths & science worlds as well as some areas of mainstream culture. 

Spirals (M.C. Escher)

Op Art doesn’t seem to suffer the “maths” "slur" in the same way, despite being as deliberately measured & containing deeply-embedded elements of geometry. If art is art because someone says it is, Escher has more than earned his place. In my opinion, he’s still criminally & tediously overlooked by many who should know better. We live in a world where by now definitions of art ought to be broader & less selective.

Square Limit Colour, (M.C. Escher)