Modernism's Last Stand - part 2

Last Stand, Caplin Cove, #2, o/p, Steven Rhude

This is a second version of the same fishing shed depicted previously from above Caplin Cove. As a subject for painting, it continues to convey something of a mystery for me. It is a rectangular structure containing the stretcher bar traits of the painter's canvas, it's conduciveness to apply abstract notations from modernist painters like Mondrian are apparent as the facade reveals a grid like pattern. And like abstraction - it is at once an impediment, and yet, also attainable in passage, a symbol for reinforcing flatness, and a vehicle for the illusion of depth.

Upon first encountering the shed, I at once desired to distinguish a balance between the outside and inside world it has by design, over laid for me. As a structure it both prevents and allows me passage. With that in mind a wide range of meaning forms the intent. On the one hand it is utilitarian, on the other, a proto- modernist object. A place of revelation, and one of concealment; an abstraction, and in turn, an individual.

But these are just my interpretations. What I experience stands far from the politicisation of an art movement by agencies intent on colonisation. True, I see the history of the propagandist's fatalities, but they fail me now as the object provides a new kind of orientation. As a particular shed, I strike up a kinship with the structure. It becomes characteristic of my act of painting with its flat surfaces and topographical rational - its illusion of depth. I go into the shed and look out. Evidence of forcible entry and vandalising are apparent as the dwelling has deteriorated. Notwithstanding this, I realise that I can extend the traditional use of the structure by violating it in another way; by imposing and thus extending the shed's range of meaning. I'm reminded of the word's of Duchamp: "to take a point of departure, as ... I used a brush, or I used a form, a specific form of expression. The way oil paint is, a very specific term, specific conception." [1]


1- from an unpublished interview with Harriet Janis, 1953. See Marcel Duchamp ed. Anne d'Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1973, p. 295



Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS