Respond to Patrick Caulfield’s, Patrick Caulfield, 1963, ‘Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi (after Delacroix)’

Patrick Caulfield’s ‘Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi (after Delacroix)’ is vibrant and magical. It is an interpretation of Delacroix’s ‘Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi’ which captures the scene after the Ottomans attacked and destroyed most of Missolonghi, a municipality of Greece. The piece was completed during his final year of college and is now being displayed at the Tate where I saw the painting. “Caulfield translated the painting in a hard-edge style, inventing the colours to suggest the propagandist tone of a political poster” (Tate, n.d.) It is this type of forceful style that really portrays the ruin in a definitive manner as well as intriguing me due to its ability to maintain and convey an emotional and detailed scene that Delacroix had originally created.
The work that Caulfield has reproduced has taken the main qualities of the image and transformed them into something, which is depicted through blocks of colour, entirely removing the textured background and replacing it with a black sheet, which frames the subjects. In many ways, this simplification is a form of abstraction. It preserves the iconography of the image but translates it into an arrangement of colour and bold lines. The eye is drawn to where one sheet of colour meets the next in a very satisfying way and this is what his practice is about, removing the detail and making new arrangements of colour and shape. A ruin is a very enigmatic site, the mystery behind its destruction and the remnants of its previous life reveals the way in which it used to thrive. In order for something to become a ruin, it was a piece of architecture at some point. This transformation of a structure into something that can be alluded to through two-dimensional artworks is something that interests me. The same aura of fantasy can be conveyed as much through an artwork as through visiting the site. “I believe that ruins may be considered works of art.” (Hetzler, 1982) Time is something that we have created, but a ruin is a clear physical embodiment of it. It is this capturing of time that makes it a poignant topic for artists to investigate.
In many of his pieces the lack of depth allows the image to become more of a pattern rather than a structured form, individual elements of the composition can become their own individual expression. The image transforms into an abstraction that allows the viewer to focus on elements that would not have been achieved with a detailed depiction. They are not detailed but they do represent the subject in a different manner. The bleakness and sharpness of the style is confrontational, but this confrontation engages the viewer.
“(...) His work is the constant refinement of a determined aesthetic enquiry.” (Bracewell, 2005) This quote really defines how Caulfield has approached his depiction of these subjects in a way that is interesting while maintaining a minimalistic approach. “There was (...) whose brush could express the likeness of anything in nature to such perfection that we seem to look not at images of things but at the very things themselves.” (Gombrich, 1971) Caulfield paints in a way that does not account for textures and the tactility of the object but simply outlines a simple expression of a form. As Gombrich says, it is more about investigating the meaning of the object rather than concentrating on its portrayal. In the context of a ruin it is the personality of the site that is important rather than the intricate details of each rock. In Caulfield’s painting while he has transformed the original work which is a much more traditional conception of the scene it still carries the same message while bringing a new vibrant and powerful option for the viewer. One can now conceive the scene into their own imagination for beauty, rather than as a record of what happened, indicative of arts changing function.