Victor Horta vs Cy Twombly
the weekend warrior, pt 496
"white paint is my marble"
Victor Horta vs Cy Twombly
"White paint is my marble," says Twombly, who for more than 40 years has been living in Rome surrounded by marble columns. But his early life was spent--as part of each year is now spent--among the Neo-Classical columns of Virginia, wooden columns painted white. Back in 1958, when we in England were beginning to respond to contemporary American art, Lawrence Gowing wrote a remarkable article, "Paint in America," exploring the crucial role in American experience of wood painted white.
"It is the quality of wood which has lasted in America and remains as strong as ever, a quality as definite and pervasive as marble ever gave to a country, and one that similarly supplies the base of life and imagination. The classical material of American building is wood and the characteristic structure is clapboard, frame surfaces of overlapping strips. It is painted white....
In America the idea of structure envisages a broad assembly of slender parts, standing squarely, but with a quality of light attentiveness, independent but aware.... In the balance [of the construction] there is the most lively serenity: it is recognisably embodied in the colour, the white paint."
(taken from here)Victor Horta (6 January 1861 - 9 September 1947) was a Belgian architect and designer. John Julius Norwich described him as "undoubtedly the key European Art Nouveau architect."
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