I have been trying for a while now to build up a catalogue of spatial archetypes – not necessarily architectural archetypes, just archetypes of organization of space. Formal archetypes, if you like. This interest goes back a long way but, ironically, it was cemented by the discovery of a book devoted to a something that is not normally recognized as an archetype - the figure Robert Motherwell called the Open.
Robert Motherwell, Beige Open, 1981
Motherwell started working on this series around 1967 and developed it for more than 20 years (he died in 1991). I won’t discuss the book – or the paintings per se (by the way, both are amazing), but just the idea of the Open: because it suddenly hit me when I leafed through the book the first time that Motherwell ‘discovered’ an archetype that is at the same time an incredibly simple concept (as an archetype should be) but also, amazingly, one that has never been really discussed – not that I know of. What is the Open? I think it is self-explanatory…
The Open is a rectangle that is, well, open. As in not closed, missing one side, or pushed to the edge of the canvas so that the imaginary fourth side disappears.
Robert Motherwell, Red Open with White line, 1979
We see Open(s) in our everyday life almost everywhere. Open fences, unfinished frames, three-sided piazzas. The section of a glass is an Open. Any room is an Open (provided that it has a door, clearly…). Space is made up of sequences of ‘Opens’ and we hardly ever realize it – hardly ever realize the power of the missing side, of the gap that lets stuff into a space.
These paintings have an astonishing sensual and technical quality but for me they transcend their physical datum because they are the means through which Motherwell exposes, discovers, establishes a whole spatial and formal category.
This was an old post dating back to 2011 - clearly the 'Open' story is still open and needs further investigating...
Firenze, Uffizi. Ground Floor plan. From L. Satkowski, Giorgio Vasari, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)
Maybe the Uffizi by Vasari can be considered an 'Open'? Somehow it has always felt a little strange to me that only one of the two short sides of this elongated courtyard is closed with an arch. But perhaps this strangeness is exactly the quality of the Open. We should ask Francesco Marullo, author of this nice piece: http://thecityasaproject.org/2012/08/the-office-and-the-loggia-giorgio-vasaris-architecture-for-bureaucracy/ In the meantime, look out for more architectural Open-s...
