CAIR CRAWFORD
LOOSE DOGS
Loose Dogs oil/canvas 36" x 79"
Hung Tortoise oil/canvas 36" x 79"
DETAIL: LOOSE DOGS
Loose Dogs:
Loose Dogs is from a series of paintings based on the biblical battle scenes that adorn the Duomo in Sienna, Italy. A segment cropped from the mosaic floor is conjoined with a geometric grid of an empty ceiling coffer. Partial figures, rabid dogs and an abstract diagram resembling a molecular structure, make up a succession of images that contest a hierarchical reading of pictorial history. Assembled horizontally, the gap between high and low is breached and the disparity between heaven and hell is conflated.
The Duomo is an architectural ideal for highly abstract space that gives the impression of a complete cosmology. In classical mythology the dead were supplied with honey-cakes to feed Cerberus, the three-headed dog, who is the janitor of the underworld. The honeycomb cluster is a blueprint of a morphological process that yields different physical assemblages shaped by and accounted for, in a wide range of structural possibilities. Patterns that continually emerge from chaotic states are painful transitions whereby every layer contains an additional layer for the articulation of heterogeneous elements.
Visual literacy is regulated by the logic of the image and governed by association and contiguity. Choosing to connect the savage nature of dogs with the incommensurable details of a spiritual edifice calls attention to where energies are most concentrated in the struggle for power. Aestheticizing aggression intensifies the relation between separable parts and creates an improbable realm of coherence that is inextricable from the creatures that inhabit it.
“sensual and cerebral pleasures of refined and neurotic creatures” (Huysmans)
Loose Dogs is from a series of paintings based on the biblical battle scenes that adorn the Duomo in Sienna, Italy. A segment cropped from the mosaic floor is conjoined with a geometric grid of an empty ceiling coffer. Partial figures, rabid dogs and an abstract diagram resembling a molecular structure, make up a succession of images that contest a hierarchical reading of pictorial history. Assembled horizontally, the gap between high and low is breached and the disparity between heaven and hell is conflated.
The Duomo is an architectural ideal for highly abstract space that gives the impression of a complete cosmology. In classical mythology the dead were supplied with honey-cakes to feed Cerberus, the three-headed dog, who is the janitor of the underworld. The honeycomb cluster is a blueprint of a morphological process that yields different physical assemblages shaped by and accounted for, in a wide range of structural possibilities. Patterns that continually emerge from chaotic states are painful transitions whereby every layer contains an additional layer for the articulation of heterogeneous elements.
Visual literacy is regulated by the logic of the image and governed by association and contiguity. Choosing to connect the savage nature of dogs with the incommensurable details of a spiritual edifice calls attention to where energies are most concentrated in the struggle for power. Aestheticizing aggression intensifies the relation between separable parts and creates an improbable realm of coherence that is inextricable from the creatures that inhabit it.
© Cair Crawford, All rights reserved
