Mosaic

Sophie Ryder ‘Blue Lady’

Sophie Ryder

Roman mosaic from Tunisia

I see that Sophie Ryder has been making mosaics, her recent exhibition in Halifax included the mosaic ‘Blue Lady’ which was on display at Dean Clough Mills. Her images reminded me of when I was in Greece and looking at the mosaics set into the floor of a very ancient villa. Ryder has had to use the mosaic way of simplifying form and in doing so she gives her images a timeless or perhaps 'set into time' quality. I have worked at what was Leeds College of Art for well over 40 years and over the doorway to the Vernon Street entrance the old mosaic mural still welcomes new students into the profession. 

The mosaic mural above the Vernon Street entrance to Leeds Arts University

Eric Taylor who used to be a principal of the college was also an accomplished mural designer and his mural for the Merrion Centre was relocated to the walls of the college's new Blenheim Walk building, when the walls hosting it were knocked down as part of a refurbishment scheme. 

Eric Taylor mosaic murals

Eric Taylor mosaic murals in their previous location

I have always loved Eric's murals, the juxtaposition of a rural scene set into the walls of a what was a then new shopping arcade, with the centre's raw brutalist carpark design, used to be like flowers growing through the cracks of a concrete pavement. But mosaic traditions also include the early Christian Church and in Greece the mosaic tradition carried on and the tradition of Greek orthodox icons ensured that a powerful simplicity of form was maintained. It is for myself fascinating that the term mosaic is likely derived from the Greek word “mousa,” meaning “work of the muses.”

Greek orthodox mosaic

A detail of eyes changes our relationship with a bowl carried by I presume by St Lucy. Suddenly the bowl is animate, it has as they say agency and it stares at us with mystic eyes perhaps coming from older more magical traditions. 

3rd century Tunisia

I find a mosaic surface mesmerising and visually hypnotic, therefore prefect for an image depicting magical ideas, or other worldly issues. Mosaic is usually associated with public spaces, and it often graces the entrances of large public buildings. I have for some time now had an interest in the mosaics that you pass when entering the National Gallery. 

Winston Churchill as 'Defiance' 

Bertrand Russell as 'Lucidity'

When you enter the front portico of the National Gallery you will see a series of mosaics by the Russian artist Boris Vasilyevich Anrep, the ones of Churchill and Russell above are from the 1950s. When you look at them closely you begin to realise they are very strange and Anrep's representations have a surreal edge made even more so by the process of mosaic itself. Because it is very hard to get any precise detail into a mosaic, you are forced to be inventive with form and in that process of simplification the work removes itself away from verisimilitude and heads into abstract territory, well it does normally, Chuck Close's work being the exception that proves the rule, but more on that later. 

The London School of Mosaic still operates courses up to degree level for anyone wanting to study this old craft and you can find several contemporary examples on the walls of the underground, such as the one by Eduardo Paolozzi below. 

Eduardo Paolozzi, Tottenham Court Tube station

I was over at the Venice Biennale last week and encountered mosaic again, Zsófia Keresztes' mosaic covered sculptures that filled the Hungarian pavilion being hard to miss. 

Zsófia Keresztes: Wilting Sympathy

Keresztes is an artist that draws in order to find her imagery. You can see her mind working when you look at her drawings perhaps easier than when you see her final sculptures. She had this to say about her drawing above, “The twin boots feed off each other’s sadness. Under the pressure of their crushing teardrops, a single flower blooms out of the split of their conjoined body. The crop of their blooming empathy perishes under the teeth of their solid ground-searching heels.” Her imagery comes from a deeply personal but poetic sensibility and like several artists at the moment she has a sensibility that recognises the non binary nature of aesthetics, embracing fluidity and hybridity. The use of mosaic helps her to harmonise all the disparate elements that emerge in her ideas.

Zsófia Keresztes

I was interested to see Marcel Proust quoted in relation to her work, in particular his notion of memory as ‘real but not actual, ideal but not abstract’. A definition I would think could apply to perception as well. Keresztes is also interested in how the virtual makes us think about objects. You often think of things in the virtual world as if they were real, and so as a sculptor I can imagine she became interested in how digital objects might manifest themselves in a 'real', if there is one, world. Her bulbous forms, which I was interested to see are carved into styrofoam and fiberglass layers, are overlaid with hand-cut glass tiles, the quality of which reminds me of public lavatories and tiled underpasses from the 1960s and 70s, however I think she uses the small area of a tiny tile to represent a pixel and therefore making an analogy with a digital surface. Keresztes also draws and her image 'Wilting Sympathy' is typical of an approach to drawing that gives us an intense experience of surface texture, this time using coloured pens to build up her surfaces rather than mosaic tiles.

Another artist that was interested in how digital images need to break surfaces down into tiny areas in order to achieve optical blends was Chuck Close and he was at one time producing (or having produced) very large mosaic portraits made from photographs. 

Chuck Close: detail

I can see what Close is getting at as he spent years copying photographs by gridding them up and carefully working small square by small square to reproduce them. The grid then became a space to play within and he started to loosen up his paint technique whilst still being able to use the grid's control over the final reading of the image. Even so it seemed to be that this was a heck of a lot of work to make what is at the end of the day a point about reproduction and how the eyes work to form holistic images from lots of bits of information.  

Hundertwasser

If you are interested in mosaic as an architectural possibility look at Hundertwasser's work, he is worth investigating for his views on our relationship with the earth and his belief that we need to work against architecture's geometric dictates and look towards a more biomorphic architectural future. 

Gaudí

Hundertwasser is following in the footsteps of Gaudí and if you want to really appreciate the possibilities of mosaic at scale you ought to go to Barcelona and visit his work in situ. 

Mosaic is one of those techniques that sits on the fence between drawing and painting. On the one hand it can be very linear, as you layout the tiles you can design using edges and see your image development as one coming from a drawing based tradition. On the other hand it can be seen as very painterly, colour being applied in small patches very like brushstrokes. 

Remember that old technologies can always be re-invented, and that mosaic in particular has a lot of potential, especially if you want to work in public spaces, as it is very robust and hard to damage. Sometimes you just need to see what happens to existing imagery when it has to go through a process of severe simplification. It helps with an understanding of an image's readability and its ability to withstand severe distortion and still be effective. 

A halved apple with pips: Detail from a mosaic floor in the Leeds Victorian arcades

See also:

Drawing with stencils

Silverpoint drawing

Graffiti 

Tattoo art

More on the grid

How to pay attention: More on Chuck Close

Visualising the invisible More on Hundertwasser