Clay figure with painted Rubik’s cube. Second-year assignments at the Athens School of Fine Arts.
Let’s play a game with shapes and associations. We hypothesize that a geometric shape can relate to a personality trait. How would you characterize a “circular” personality? Words like soft, soothing, nurturing, encompassing, tender, feminine come into my mind. On the other hand, when I think of a “quadrilateral” personality, I think of rational, practical, tectonic, robust, masculine. The more shapes you can think of, the more adjectives you will find.
I am writing about this today because of an incident back in 2013 that recently came to mind. I was in my second year at the Athens School of Fine Arts. We had the winter term examinations, which usually take place in January. The process is as follows: you put up all the works you created during the semester, and the professor comes and evaluates them. Among my paintings, I also put two objects on a small pedestal side-by-side. It was a small curvy clay figurine depicting a mother and child and a Rubik’s cube, which I painted over. The cube was an idea for an assignment we had on finding different ways to render Form in art. I took the external linear outlines of three objects and painted them over a monochromatic background on the cube. That way, the viewer could “play” with them and create new forms. While the professor was observing the two objects, he turns around and looks at me and says: “How is it possible that the same person did these two works? They are so different!”.
I was so surprised by his question that I discussed it with my analyst the next day. Assuming that an artist’s personality is revealed in their work, why should it be surprising that someone can display an extensive range of contradictory traits? You see a work of art that is geometric, symmetrical and linear like the works of Bridget Riley, for example. How would you describe the personality of the artist who created it? Someone who is more cerebral rather than emotional? Someone whose rational and logical side is more dominant? But if you see the drawings she made at the Goldsmiths School of Art, you would never guess that it is the same artist. They lack all the characteristics of her later work.
Why can’t the geometric and linear coexist with the fluid and the curvy? Can’t a person simultaneously have a rational, analytical, and practical side with an irrational, intuitive, and chaotic one? Why do they have to be mutually exclusive?
In Euclidean geometry, squaring the circle is impossible.
In the geometry of ours hearts, it is always possible.
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