KNUD MERRILD

In turn of the century Denmark, Merrild began his career as an apprentice house painter. The monotony of the work was meditative, and the techniques of paint mixing and application formed the basis of his most famous series of works. Yet, for all the influence his ‘Flux’ paintings had on 20th century abstract expressionism, Merrild worked as a house painter on occasion throughout his life, it serving as a financial bedrock in eras of low income. The ‘Flux’ paintings, such as the one here, were made by diluting oil paints into viscous, flowable forms, and dripping them onto the canvas in rhythmic motion to create post-surreal works that serve as a collaboration between Merrild and chance itself. Moving to America in the early 1920s, he became part of a group of writers that included D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Aldous Huxley, who all saw in the experimental Dane a kindred spirit who expressed his ideas of post-modernity through abstract forms rather than words. 

ALBRECHT DÜRER

Two hands gently pressed together in prayer, sketched as either preparation or posterity, have travelled the world over half a millennia. They have ended up on the tombstone of Andy Warhol, tattooed on thousands of bodies, recreated in endless variation and reproduced on every medium imaginable. Albrecht Dürer’s humble drawing has become, since it was created in the early 1500s, one of the most significant and iconic images of faith in the western world. It is because of this that various myths and stories as to its origin have sprung up over the years, each trying to find some contextual poetry in its creation that justifies its fame and acclaim. Yet the truth is more simple; the hands were painted as either a study for, or a record of, a detail in Dürer’s Heller Altarpiece. Immaculately rendered on precious blue paper there is no doubt Dürer was proud of the work, but their beauty does not come from a grand backstory or a tragic tale, simply from the devotion of an artist trying to capture the flesh and bones of faith in ink and paper. 

AMÉDÉÉ OZENFANT

Art consists in the conception before anything else, and technique is merely a tool at the service of conception. These are two of the tenets of Purism, a movement founded in rebellion to the perceived ornamentation of Cubism by Ozenfant and, perhaps more significantly, Le Corbusier. In the war-torn France of 1918, ravaged by the First World War, Purism emerged as a way to bring back order. Cubism had become the de-facto school of Art and had strayed from it’s earliest intentions to become romantic and decorative, with an emphasis on detail that detracted from it’s radical, abstract origins. With Purism, Ozenfant and Corbusier focused on the essence of objects, free from details or decoration the forms are allowed to stand alone and find beauty in the simplicity of the world around us. It was a way to return to nature, without copying it, and while their unison ended, both Ozenfant and Corbusier held these ideas with them for the rest of their lives, and Le Corbusier used them to create the modern language of design and architecture.