Designer Analysis - Hayter, Stanley William

Hayter, Stanley William

Claduegne

Stanley William Hayter was a British Painter and printmaker born in London in 1901, who set up the Atelier17 studio. His work in the 1930 was associated with the Surrealist movement, launched in Paris in 1924. The aim of surrealism was to reveal the unconscious and translate it into art. There was no single style of Surrealist art but two broad types can be assumed: (i) oneiric (dream-like) (ii) automatism. The work features the element of surprise, juxtapositions and the unexpected. He then developed his work and became renown as an innovator of printmaking and engraving.

The picture above shows one of Hayters Prints, Claduegne. The picture is of a collection of ribbon like bands that form a grid structure. The grid isn't flat, the ribbons run at an angle facing down from the bottom left to almost the top right. but instead finish in the top corner with a sleep incline. Each line appears interwoven at a 45 0 angle. It isn't rigid, although I have described the page as a grid, the ribbons appear to flow across the page making slight wave like curving movements from left to right.

More interesting then the form is how it relates to the colours. Fluorescent, sharp almost electric seems to be the theme for the colour pallet. Four colours are primary. the background a carpeted deep purple with a vertical lines of a very faded turquoise. As the ribbons descend this purple is covered with a soft red that appears as a light rather then a colour. areas have been scraped away or worn and parts of the carpet is reveled. The ribbons on this surface are the same electric turquoise blue that runs through the purple. As they twist or overlap the colour is removed to produce a checked pattern. The ribbons running upright look to have a colour descended from the red, they are a fluorescent pink and produce the same transparent pattern as they cross another subject. All the colours are acidic.

On a whole there is a grubby, uncleaned sanded texture as if the colours have been overlapped in the wrong order and had to undergo a peeling procedure to readjust the image; parts therefore worn off or stuck in the process.

There is no beginning or end to the study, it looks instead as if it is a snapshot of a larger sample study.