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Gary Hume

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Towards the end of the Composition section of Intimacy, we are asked to review how contemporary artists use positive and negative space within their work.

To begin with, we are asked to focus on Gary Hume, an English artist who came to prominence in the early 1990s.

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Piece 1, Cerith – 1998.

Piece 2, Angel – 1998.

These are two of the ten screen prints in the series Portraits. The prints in this series are produced using between three and fifteen colours and are very abstract, to say the least.

Cerith represents the subject’s face and neck with a large blue area (the positive space), surrounded by an even larger yellow area (the negative space). I love the way that the spaces within this piece contrast so well against each other, it almost feels that there is no “space”. In the previous pieces of work that I’ve researched in Drawing 1, I’ve found that negative space is often depicted by empty space, but it doesn’t appear to be empty when it’s filled with vibrancy and colour.

Angel depicts a large white face framed by yellow hair. I find this portrait sad, as it looks as though the figure in it has bruising around the right eye. The khaki and yellow colouring used also gives the impression of a bruise upon a person’s body. The white area of the face is upon a neck represented only by drawn lines that stop abruptly, and are surrounded by a vast area of khaki. Again, the colour used in the negative space here fills it up entirely and, to me, doesn’t seem negative or empty at all.

I love the use of colour to fill these spaces, positive and negative, as there is nothing empty about either and the entirety of both pieces are brimming with colour and solidity.

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M.C. Escher

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Another artist I found was M. C. Escher, a Dutch graphic design artist. He created illustrations for books, designed tapestries, and made murals, but his main form was printmaking.

Escher liked to involve positive and negative space and shapes in his pieces, and created some very astounding pieces with the use of this technique.

The above image depicts a day landscape merging into a night scene.

If you focus on the day landscape, the black birds appear and become the positive shapes/space and the daylit area becomes the negative space. However, if you look at the dark landscape, the white birds stand out, making them into the positive shapes/space, with the darkened land being the negative space. Escher incorporates a lot of optical illusions within his pieces, and this is cleverly displayed in this piece. The fact that you are able to see two different scenes within one image by use of negative and positive is fantastic.

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I’ve viewed a few interpretations of positive/negative space today, and I have come to notice that there are a few outlooks you can have regarding these spaces.

In the figures created by Gary Hume I considered the positive space to be the area that is the main focus or figure of the artwork and the negative space to be the block of colour or area surrounding the focus. However, after looking at some of Escher’s work, I can see that it could be portrayed other ways. For example, in his work the positive space is the white or lighter area, and the negative space is the black or darker area.

Both portrayals are super effective and really interesting takes on the technique, and I don’t think I could choose a favourite if I tried. They are incomparable and powerful in their own ways, which is encouraging as it shows me that I don’t have to stick to a strict guideline on what positive and negative space should be.

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Bibliography

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https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hume-cerith-p78688

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hume-angel-p78682

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