Clive Head
Lovers’ Leap, 2020
Oil on canvas
83.8 x 106.7 cm
33 x 42 in
33 x 42 in
The origins of this painting can be traced back to a morning in Ealing, London in 2019. Head took photographs of the street outside a café where he and his...
The origins of this painting can be traced back to a morning in Ealing, London in 2019. Head took photographs of the street outside a café where he and his wife were breakfasting. The pavement was busy with commuters and shoppers. The vestiges of this street can be seen at the edges of this painting. Head recalls that the main figure on the right was initially drawn as a double-decker bus.
Perhaps "Lovers’ Leap" refers to the activity of some of these figures. The nude figure on the left is painted from both the front and the back and is diving into the painting, her right leg raised with the sole of her foot pressed against the picture plane. Beyond her is a smaller figure striding off the painting, and above her another figure (with an umbrella?) leaping in the air. Head seems to be interested in both the multiple perspectives of Cubism and the sequential motion of Futurism and much has been written about his work within this context. But this would be to overlook the real consequences of this layering and this roving eye. Look at that figure on the right, which started out as a bus. The overlapping figures may imply motion, but they also generate a new kind of figuration and a new kind of figure. That woman (or is it a man?) in yellow, walking towards us is embraced by its shadow to the right and is reviled by a further apparition to its left. These are not just the transitions of a single figure in motion but a dramatic tension of human emotion which traverses the canvas. "Lovers’ Leap" might well be alluding to an unfolding narrative of passion, love, rejection and fear.
But there is a further plausible meaning. "Lovers’ Leap" can also be a place, typically a precipice which has been named as such after a fabled story of romantic tragedy. Head has often stated that painting, before it can be about anything else is always about space. Placing these figures and these events on the canvas, irrespective of how we read it, will be the creation of a new space and a new place which has its own unique logistics through which it functions. The space of this new painting is named "Lovers’ Leap"; we can only surmise about the human narrative which found its ultimate resolution in this particular configuration of colours, shapes and lines; this particular space for us to occupy.
Perhaps "Lovers’ Leap" refers to the activity of some of these figures. The nude figure on the left is painted from both the front and the back and is diving into the painting, her right leg raised with the sole of her foot pressed against the picture plane. Beyond her is a smaller figure striding off the painting, and above her another figure (with an umbrella?) leaping in the air. Head seems to be interested in both the multiple perspectives of Cubism and the sequential motion of Futurism and much has been written about his work within this context. But this would be to overlook the real consequences of this layering and this roving eye. Look at that figure on the right, which started out as a bus. The overlapping figures may imply motion, but they also generate a new kind of figuration and a new kind of figure. That woman (or is it a man?) in yellow, walking towards us is embraced by its shadow to the right and is reviled by a further apparition to its left. These are not just the transitions of a single figure in motion but a dramatic tension of human emotion which traverses the canvas. "Lovers’ Leap" might well be alluding to an unfolding narrative of passion, love, rejection and fear.
But there is a further plausible meaning. "Lovers’ Leap" can also be a place, typically a precipice which has been named as such after a fabled story of romantic tragedy. Head has often stated that painting, before it can be about anything else is always about space. Placing these figures and these events on the canvas, irrespective of how we read it, will be the creation of a new space and a new place which has its own unique logistics through which it functions. The space of this new painting is named "Lovers’ Leap"; we can only surmise about the human narrative which found its ultimate resolution in this particular configuration of colours, shapes and lines; this particular space for us to occupy.
