Lillian Florsheim

This assessment discusses issues of art and architecture as found in Lillian’s work. She was well aware of architecture and much of her work can be read as a commentary on architectural issues, executed in the realm of art.

Boundaries

Sculptures can have an inside and an outside. While the outside can be understood as its exterior shape, its inside is the space formed within. An interior, this space needs some closure. In between these two is a boundary, a zone between the interior and the exterior. In three-dimensional work, boundary can be found in a thickness or in a separating element that serves to mediate between an interior and exterior. In artwork, boundaries are typically located within the work itself - and while not so evident in sculpture or architecture - the boundary can be a thin edge or a significant space to separates the inside and outside. In the zone of transition, sometimes it is not clear where one starts and the other ends.

Boundary can assist determination or perception of the form, and in pieces with multiple readings of form, there may be different boundaries at work. In some abstract works, can also have a swaying between legibility and illegibility, often an attribute to the work of art. This establishes a dissonance, and can keep the viewer intrigued.

In Construction des Petites Cylindres (K1-K4) the exterior is clear and defined. The overall shape of the piece is clear with high geometric clarity, while the interior is less.

so, a detailed space in-between rods. All other factors are eliminated, allowing focus on the making of shape by individual rods.

Between

In Lillian’s work with columns for example, the overall shape is a construction of rods and its form clear. Yet these columns have peculiar interiors, with op art effects that deny a singular read or clear image. These then have a contrast between the clear outline of exterior form, and the less-certain interiority.

Moving Rods through Cube (O5) has a fully transparent exterior, and its interior is on full display. The boundary between the outside edge and the interior construction is uncertain, as the viewer is unsure whether to focus on the interior or the exterior form.

Furthermore, the exterior form is put into question as the rods move in and out, rendering the exterior changed. Equally curious, the movement of the rods only impacts the object’s exterior with no noticeable change to the interior. Here then is a blurred boundary, with less clarity between the interior and the exterior. Consider one of the plaster works, such as Quatrefoil (D6) with a clear exterior form (or edge) but a less defined interior; the boundary between the two is difficult to locate.

Technique

Several works rely on technique to reconcile different readings: For example, Clear Wobble in Black (K7) is about a wobbly edge. The perception changes, sometimes, the piece is a clear shape, while other times, it remains as an assembly of rods. The black plane complements either: it accentuates form and assists in the overall read of the work; other times the black plane serves as an armature to hold individual rods in place, and is the surface where the pattern can be read.

In Construction en Diamont de Cylindres (M2) , the initial read is a clearly-defined exterior shape. A look inside reveals it is made of further shapes, with a very strongly defined interior spaces (inside the cylindrical tubes), with little reference to the initial exterior read. The two understandings are reconciled at the ends of tubes, each neatly trimmed at the same angle, for the reading that here are tubes assembled to make a single shape.

Abstraction

While largely abstract, one can find figural references abounding within. As such, they are worthy of some discussion. Figural work is understood typically as reference to the human figure as a recognizable element in the work. The emphasis is on the familiar for increased legibility. A common way to do this is with the use of realism, a replication of what is commonly seen, such as in Lady in Circle (B4).

Abstract work is often described as the absence of visual reference to recognizable human characteristics. Patterns, some of Lillian’s more abstract pieces, rely only on geometry, and stand as examples of simple arrangements.

Can one consider Lillian’s work as both abstract and figural at the same time? This would establish an odd middle zone between these two normally distant poles. If successfully done, the work could achieve greater meaning, pulling together aspects from these two different worlds. Consider then Flying Nun (D8) as one such possibility: when seen from the front, the form is abstract, the curvature unique, yet the image oddly balanced and comforting. When seen from side views, clear figural associations can be found, with highly gestural curvature.

Pieces may be abstract, but also be with hints of figure. In Triangles Up and Down (P6), the assembly is arranged in a playful way, rotated and touching the base or reaching up. The piece has lightness, an attribute of human experience, not geometry.

Figure-Ground in art and sculpture

In visual studies, one analytic technique is reducing the work of art to either figure or ground. Visual rules are imposed to clarify the effect of the work in terms of basic overall relationships of the figure to its context (ground). The relationship can be simple or complex, but the technique can be effectively used to give meaning to a piece of art.

An important part of a figure-ground analysis is understanding the ground, which is the perceptual context which allows the figure to emerge and take dominance. Usually, the ground is shown as some neutral color, without much detail, and is typically how most artwork is read. The ground exists to elevate the figure.

The figure, with its strong presence, in most cases, embodies the dominant features of the work. It typically is enhanced with more detail, brighter colors, or even complex form, all to make it distinct from the ground. The figure may be the element to which we are drawn, thought-provoking, and where attention is focused as thoughts of the piece develop and the work takes on a deeper meaning.

Some typical figure-ground pairings can be found in landscapes with people, or with a work of architecture in its surroundings, or in a still life with an object in a context. In these, the figure and ground act conventionally as foreground and background, regardless of scale. Such uses of figure-ground are readily found in multiple disciplines, from photography, to painting, architecture, and sculpture.

Figure-ground can be used in sculptures to achieve effects as described, but it works in a different way as viewpoint, materiality, and three-dimensional issues are different elements than found in two-dimensional works. The relationship between figure and ground can be tweaked. Elements that favor either can be used differently in order to create interest.

For example, in many pieces in the Rod and Plane groups (J and P), the rods are placed to support one impression, which was then altered in other works simply by adjusting their spacing and proportion. In the Square of Rods (H12), the number and placement of rods overwhelms the ground, producing a dominant figural read. One reads rings of rods, without reference to the ground. The density of rods makes rings, creating an interiority between rings. The ground plane is there simply to be looked through. In this example, there is an opening in its center, creating additional ambiguity as to figure and ground relationship. So too, the piece was made with the back plane in black or in clear. The example with the opaque plane reinforces reading the ground. When clear, the distinction between the rods and the plane is less evident. The whole assembly is then all figure, without ground.

Centrality

Centrality is the grouping of objects towards a single focus. In a work of art, objects can be organized and condense to a single place. Such organizational patterns are traditionally found in paintings with a main central figure or action scene. The viewer’s eyes are brought towards a center. Proportion and other visual properties can reinforce centrality, as can be seen in the Renaissance painting, The School of Athens, where one point perspective, the figures and constructed context all direct the eye toward the center.

Contemporary art works are full of variations on this notion; one can find offset or multiple centers, or even denial. Other works strive for balance around a center which is not expressly denoted.

In sculpture, centrality can be understood as some basis around which the sculpture is configured. Sculptures need not be symmetrical for this, and in fact can have multiple centers, to be seen from different vantage points gaining more complex reads.

Centrality can be found in the works of many modern artists/architects, although interpreted differently. Naum Gabo and Josef Albers invoked centrality, although in very different mediums. Both were appreciated by Lillian, who owned and featured their works in her home. Gabo’s work reinforces centrality through interior density, as many of his works pull the viewer to focus by having dramatic elements in the center. This provides a highly internalized three-dimensional quality, for viewing from different vantage points.

Albers is widely known for his Homage to the Square studies, where centrality is evidenced by the placement of the squares and his use of bilateral symmetry. In these works, typically the centers are identical, all using the same center point, while the study is on the impact of different colors, independent of any compositional change. In other works, Albers explored centrality differently, working both with and against an implied center.

Centrality is readily found in the architecture of Bertrand Goldberg, typically used in the building plans. He worked with central cores, placing all services solidly in the center of his buildings. In his hospitals, he interpreted social relationships as working around a central visual focus point.

Lillian’s work evidences her interested in centers. She reinterpreted her sonin- law’s architectural ideas in her visual constructs, and it is possible to understand her work as a conceptual critique of his architectural concepts and plans. She approached these ideas in different ways, investigating density and transparency and their effect on a center with both visual and physical centers, as found for example in Shifted Rectangles (G8).

She also challenged the concept of centrality in her string works, which are without an explicit center, but suggest centrality by placing implied forms around it. So too her OP pieces focus on the field condition instead, without centers.