Lot 150
PATRICK HUGHES (BRITISH B. 1939) §
REALITY IS A PALE IMITATION OF ART
Scottish Contemporary & Post-War Art
Auction: 25 August 2011 at 10:00 BST
Description
Signed inscribed and dated '79 verso, gloss paint on board, unframed
Dimensions
122cm x 91cm (47.5in x 35.5in)
Footnote
Provenance: The Garvey Collection
The Galleries, 15 Dock St. London
Born in Birmingham in 1939, among Hughes' earliest visual memories are the terror of war and sheltering from air raids at his grandmother's house, caught between the infinity of two mirrors hanging on her walls as sirens rang overhead, or indeed staring up at the underside of the stairs in his house as he crouched beneath them, the world turned upside down. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that throughout his long artistic career he has demonstrated a constant passion for optical illusions that test the limits between perception and reality, becoming best known for his 'reverspective' works. In such works as Jubilee (Glasgow Museums),
Hughes blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture, the two- and threedimensional. As we approach it we might perhaps feel a sense of nausea or confusion, as our senses mislead us, highlighting the age-old link between, and mistrust of, art and artifice. Reality is a Pale Imitation of Art, with its rainbow motif that is typical of this period (and
demonstrates an early interest in optics), similarly plays with questions of reality and mimesis. With its mise en abime of one painting inside another which threaten, like mirrors, to echo into infinity, and its apparent assertion of the superiority of the depicted world over that which surrounds us, this painting continues a long-running philosophical dialogue that remains relevent in our increasingly virtual experience of life: how do we know what is real, and if it is beautiful, does it matter?