The Pleasure of Patterns in Art

Summary

The Pleasure of Patterns in ArtThe interplay between repetition and variation is central to how we perceive structure, rhythm, and depth across mediums.Photo: Parrish Freeman, via UnsplashBeeLine Reader uses subtle color gradients to help you read more efficiently.Made at the high point of Kline, de Kooning, and Pollock, Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans” was a poke in the eye of abstract expressionism. Not only was it blatantly mimetic, but it was being blatantly mimetic with a mundane commercial product found in every supermarket and corner grocery store in America. When people think of repetition in painting, they probably think first of these iconic soup cans.This article is adapted from Samuel Jay Keyser’s book “Play It Again, Sam.” An open access edition of the book is available here.But not all repetition is as in-your-face or as disruptive as “Campbell’s Soup Cans.” One painting from the Impressionist period is particularly pertinent. I am thinking of “Paris Street; Rainy Day” by Gustave Caillebotte. Currently housed in the Art Institute of Chicago, it was originally exhibited at the Third Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1877. It is probably Caillebotte’s best-known work. I consider it a masterpiece and regret that I have never seen the real thing. Even so, it never ceases to bowl me over. Discussions of it typically focus on the incredible verisimilitude of the painting, the sense that it is photographic in its vivid capture of an ordinary moment. Thus, art critic Sebastian Smee observes in an article in The Washington Post dated January 20, 2021:Caillebotte compressed different sensations of time and movement into the same picture. A stroll to the farthest visible point could chew up half an hour. But this current predicament — a potential pedestrian collision—will play out in seconds. Do we veer left or right? Our instinctive hesitation is complicated by the man coming into the frame from the right. The space is simply too tight. And all these umbr...