Adam's MID-CENTURY MODERN 10th May 2022

42 Tuesday 10 th May 2022 70 PATRICK CAULFIELD (1936-2005) COACH LAMP (1994) Acrylic on board, 81.3 x 55.9cm Signed and inscribed verso Provenance: With Waddington Galleries, London; Private Collection, Dublin € 40,000 - 60,000 The Tate Collection holds a number of examples of Caulfield’s work, particularly in print, which all feature lamps. Some date from the early part of his career in the late 1960s ( Lampshade, 1969) as well as more recent examples including a screen-print version of Coach Lamp (1994) on this occasion the background is a pale yellow. They all employ, as in this painted work, a strong contrast of colour, shape and line. Caulfield’s work often drew inspiration from ordinary objects we would find within our homes, occasional tables, vases, windows, curtains, plants. They were rendered in bold colours that enliven them and handled with the same sleek and paired back formalism. He also took inspiration from modernist movements such as Cubism and Juan Gris was a very important artistic figure to him throughout his career. After graduating from the Chelsea School of Art in 1960 he continued his training in the Royal College of Art and studied alongside contemporaries such as David Hockney and Allen Jones. He was included in the seminal 1964 Whitechapel Gallery exhibition The New Generation with fellow artists Bridget Riley and John Hoyland. Caulfield uses colour to create the contours of the objects, in this example with the dark black of the pointed pagoda shaped coach lamp, whose light is reflected in angular grey shadows against the lilac background. He suggests the illu- minated glass plates through the use of two block colours, white and pale blue. We also get the impression that there is another light source in the work, possibly from above, though not illustrated. He has removed the object from its living environment and the focus is entirely on the object itself and the play of light and shade. These elements are contrived but it also reflects the reality of anything we read to be ‘natural’ -light, shade, depth- within a painted work to be the very same. As he remarked in an interview to Marco Livingstone, ‘I’m not actually painting from observation of light, I’m making up an idea of how light could appear to be. The angles of light in naturalistic terms could be totally wrong, but they either help the composition of the picture or they help the feeling of light more strongly.’ (Marco Livingstone, Patrick Caulfield: Paintings, London 2005) In comparison to the printed version of this work, there is texture to the painted surface. We imagine that it is has a completely smooth finish, and until you view the work up close do you notice the fine patterns and marks made by the artist as he applied the paint. He replicates a stucco-like appearance to the wall, the shadows and even the light fixture itself. This heightens the sense of materiality of the object, while also being somewhat at odds to what we imagine is the hard cold surface of the wall and the lantern. Yet this juxtaposition, of perception and appearance, sits at the heart of Caulfield’s practice and forces us to re-imagine the ordinary and more banal objects of our surroundings in an entire- ly new light. Niamh Corcoran, April 2022