The Kink in the Arc is a collective, dream novel, devised by Paul Becker. Invited writers, artists and curators contribute a description of an artwork in any form, these descriptions are then ‘sited’ within the context of the novel: an overheard conversation between two residents in a ‘sanatorium for the weary of image’. The Kink in the Arc is fundamentally concerned with a version of Ekphrasis: descriptions of artworks contained within artworks.
This extract was published in The Kink in the Arc, August 2018. To read and see the images that make up the entire, ongoing work click the link.
It is a large room.
It is a room she has been to before?
Yes, only then it was filled with enormous paintings — huge clotted fields, great Middle
European rucks and fallows of earth cupped and ridged in heavy oil paint; ochre and
black, Naples yellow in a fat sandy paste. There are pieces of straw in them and the
tangled pencil lines of the poet, Celan, in the painter’s seductive handwriting. In front of
the paintings the painter had loomed, filling the space, commanding attention, himself
tall and solid as his work, in black trousers and white shirt, alert and confident, genial
and attentive. His hair black, in his prime, as he laid out his fields for viewing.
Once she had wanted to make paintings like this, large scale landscapes, that she could
step inside, that might take her inside them. A landscape that you might enter in to, and
walk around.
When she returns this time, the walls of the room are empty. The light comes in from
the curved glass roof. It is a safer place. A hall or school gymnasium, painted out white.
Two hesitant lines of chairs have been laid out half way across the room. She sits down
just in front of the chairs, on a space of varnished wooden floor. She sits crossed-legged,
then kneels to one side and waits in silence, as she had done in years of school
assemblies.
It is still. There are no paintings on the wall.
A small woman walks out. Her hair is thick and reddish, tied back in a single plait that
reaches below her waist. Her face is solemn and set, grave and knowing. She is drawn in
on herself, into the full intent of what she must do. She commands a quiet
concentration.
In this white room, a small woman, standing straight, her long plait straight down her
spine.
How does she appear?
She frowns. She does not smile. The woman stands, she walks with precision, across the
empty space in front of the chairs. The woman sits down at a table. Elbows on the table,
she leans forward and picks up thick grains of salt from the table surface with her index
finger and lets them fall. She looks down, utterly absorbed by her actions, utterly
precise. The salt falls. It crashes down.
The woman picks up a painting from the floor. It is a smallish painting, just the right size
for this smallish woman to hold in her arms. The painting is a little wider than the
woman, she holds it across herself, between her hands, it fills the space between her
chin and the most prominent part of her ribcage. It is a house with a path running by it.
The house is a country cottage, two stories, it has a fence outside and leaves, and a grassy
path in front. It is an old fashioned, almost childlike painting, it is somehow familiar.
In her mother’s bathroom there had hung a similar painting; a rural scene, a cottage and
a fence and a path, only in that one there were children running past, and geese, and
perhaps goslings. That had been a pale painting, a watercolour, perhaps a reproduction.
It sat easily with the primary yellow walls and the cork tiles of the floor. The painting
now held by the silent woman is darker, painted in oil, viridian and magenta, the hues of
her own great grandfather’s paintings from the 20’s and 30’s.
Viridian, magenta, and perhaps some siena; cadmium red for balance.
The woman begins to speak. She speaks rhythmically, like a poem, looking down at the
painting as she looked down at the small pile of salt, contained by her downward gaze:
Now I am in the painting, she says. Now I am on the street.
Now I am in the house, now I am on the path.
Now I am in the house.
She points, without looking up, and we see her there, walking through the painting.
She commands our belief and so performs the trick of changing scale and she is there
inside the painting. She is walking along the path. She is in the house.
Liza Dimbleby, 2018
This extract was published in The Kink in the Arc, August 2018. To read and see the images that make up the entire, ongoing work click the link.
It is a large room.
It is a room she has been to before?
Yes, only then it was filled with enormous paintings — huge clotted fields, great Middle
European rucks and fallows of earth cupped and ridged in heavy oil paint; ochre and
black, Naples yellow in a fat sandy paste. There are pieces of straw in them and the
tangled pencil lines of the poet, Celan, in the painter’s seductive handwriting. In front of
the paintings the painter had loomed, filling the space, commanding attention, himself
tall and solid as his work, in black trousers and white shirt, alert and confident, genial
and attentive. His hair black, in his prime, as he laid out his fields for viewing.
Once she had wanted to make paintings like this, large scale landscapes, that she could
step inside, that might take her inside them. A landscape that you might enter in to, and
walk around.
When she returns this time, the walls of the room are empty. The light comes in from
the curved glass roof. It is a safer place. A hall or school gymnasium, painted out white.
Two hesitant lines of chairs have been laid out half way across the room. She sits down
just in front of the chairs, on a space of varnished wooden floor. She sits crossed-legged,
then kneels to one side and waits in silence, as she had done in years of school
assemblies.
It is still. There are no paintings on the wall.
A small woman walks out. Her hair is thick and reddish, tied back in a single plait that
reaches below her waist. Her face is solemn and set, grave and knowing. She is drawn in
on herself, into the full intent of what she must do. She commands a quiet
concentration.
In this white room, a small woman, standing straight, her long plait straight down her
spine.
How does she appear?
She frowns. She does not smile. The woman stands, she walks with precision, across the
empty space in front of the chairs. The woman sits down at a table. Elbows on the table,
she leans forward and picks up thick grains of salt from the table surface with her index
finger and lets them fall. She looks down, utterly absorbed by her actions, utterly
precise. The salt falls. It crashes down.
The woman picks up a painting from the floor. It is a smallish painting, just the right size
for this smallish woman to hold in her arms. The painting is a little wider than the
woman, she holds it across herself, between her hands, it fills the space between her
chin and the most prominent part of her ribcage. It is a house with a path running by it.
The house is a country cottage, two stories, it has a fence outside and leaves, and a grassy
path in front. It is an old fashioned, almost childlike painting, it is somehow familiar.
In her mother’s bathroom there had hung a similar painting; a rural scene, a cottage and
a fence and a path, only in that one there were children running past, and geese, and
perhaps goslings. That had been a pale painting, a watercolour, perhaps a reproduction.
It sat easily with the primary yellow walls and the cork tiles of the floor. The painting
now held by the silent woman is darker, painted in oil, viridian and magenta, the hues of
her own great grandfather’s paintings from the 20’s and 30’s.
Viridian, magenta, and perhaps some siena; cadmium red for balance.
The woman begins to speak. She speaks rhythmically, like a poem, looking down at the
painting as she looked down at the small pile of salt, contained by her downward gaze:
Now I am in the painting, she says. Now I am on the street.
Now I am in the house, now I am on the path.
Now I am in the house.
She points, without looking up, and we see her there, walking through the painting.
She commands our belief and so performs the trick of changing scale and she is there
inside the painting. She is walking along the path. She is in the house.
Liza Dimbleby, 2018