Part 2 Research Point Negative Space

Still Life with Dagger, 1963. Patrick Caulfield.
Tate Museum. September 2004. Accessed 7 July 2015.

As I had never researched the work of Patrick Caulfield, I spent some time looking through images of artworks of his to explore his use of negative and positive space. I found the image Still Life with Dagger, 1963 (Caulfield, 1963), intriguing. According to the display caption at the Tate Museum, the dagger and sheath were draw from life “in the Victoria and Albert Museum.” (Tate Museum, September 2004) In this work, he juxtaposes simplified geometric shapes to render the ubiquitous pitcher with the detailed linear rendition of the details of the dagger and sheath. The bright blue left-hand negative space corner, helps to balance the detailed turquoise of the dagger and sheath. The balance seems to pivot around the fulcrum caused by the inverted white triangle which forms the mouth of the jug. There is an interesting interplay between the suggested spherical shape of the beads and the flat two-dimensional rendition of the pitcher and its surrounding negative space and tray cloth.

Below I have included images of my sketchbook work for this Research Point. As it is a Sketchbook, I have used a different citation method.


Sketchbook Page 1



Sketchbook page 2

Works Cited

Caulfield, P., 1963. Still Life with Dagger. [Art] (Tate Britain).

Tate Museum, September 2004. Still Life with Dagger 1963. [Online]
Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/caulfield-still-life-with-dagger-t02032
[Accessed 27 June 2015].