Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Design Review: Volume 3, Issue 2 (September-October 1950)

With The Flowerpiece we have stillness, though stillness with, in the original, almost sparkle. It is in the tradition of those still lifes, never reduced to a formula, in which McCormack has produced an astonishing and subtle network of colour; and if you look at this for a while you get almost the illusion of colour, so skilful is the balance, the interaction, of black and white. The drawing might be a preliminary study for something larger, but I do not think it is. It stands on its own, sel…

Drawing of flowerpiece by T. A. McCormack.

With The Flowerpiece we have stillness, though stillness with, in the original, almost sparkle. It is in the tradition of those still lifes, never reduced to a formula, in which McCormack has produced an astonishing and subtle network of colour; and if you look at this for a while you get almost the illusion of colour, so skilful is the balance, the interaction, of black and white. The drawing might be a preliminary study for something larger, but I do not think it is. It stands on its own, self-sufficiently and very firmly. Full as it is of brushwork, I do not think anything has been wasted; the blobs, squiggles and crosses sink into a quite coherent and satisfying pattern. No one could wish to exclude this little picture from the canon of McCormack's work.—J.C.B.