Black Diamond Anniversary -- Artists Who Used Diamond Shapes

In honor of my one-year anniversary of living in Black Diamond, an old coal-mining town, we will be exploring diamond-shaped patterns in art. 

Growing up, our rec room floors were laid with large black-and-white square tiles that resembled a checkerboard or a diamond pattern similar to those in Vermeer (1632-75) paintings such as “The Art of Painting” (1665-67). Ours were laid 300 years later!

Two Harlequins (1886), Degas

Harlequins

Modern artists, such as Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and Emil Betzler (1892-1974) used a diamond pattern in their harlequin paintings. The pose of Degas' harlequin is like one of his ballerinas warming up before a performance.

I wonder if Cezanne was channeling Vermeer when he painted the similarly-patterned curtains in his background. The white hat also looks like something out of Vermeer's era.

Pierrot and Harlequin (1888), Cezanne

The Two Saltimbanques (1901), Picasso

Harlequins 2 (ca. 1960), Betzler

Neo-Plasticism and Op Art

Later, in the eras of Neo-Plasticism (1917-1944) -- Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), Ilya Bolotowsky (1907-1981) -- and Op Art (the 1960s and 1970s) -- Victor Vasarely (1906-1997) --engaged in non-objective art employing geometric shapes such as the diamond.  Mondrian even took his compositions typically painted on a square canvas and rotated them 45 degrees. He originally painted Broadway Boogie Woogie in 1942-3, then in 1944, just before the artist’s death, he painted the similar Victory Boogie Woogie, which he oriented like a diamond but never completed. 

Black Diamond (ca. 1970), Bolotowsky

Another artist who used the style espoused by Mondrian was Ilya Bolotowsky, who began to include the diamond shape in his art in 1947.

I love the opposing color scheme in this work by Op Artist, Victor Vasarely. It is also a study of value gradation. How wonderful to be able to precisely record what one's brain is imagining and to preserve and communicate such images for other brains to interpret!

In 1979, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) made several gold screen-prints using diamond dust, including this portrait of fellow artist, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986). Because this was part of the Warhol exhibit at the Palm Springs Art Museum in 2018, my photo captured his image reflecting off the opposite wall. As I said in another post in which I displayed this photo -- doubly creepy!!

As a nod to my Arizona friend who quilts, here is a fine example of a diamond pattern sewn into a quilt. It's actually made up of small triangles arranged such they combine to form larger diamond shapes.

Now let's move to paintings showing workers in coal mines and other venues. 

Miners and Other Workers

Workers in the Snow (1912), Munch

When I went looking for paintings of miners, I immediately thought of Edvard Munch, whose works we saw at his museum in Oslo, Norway while on our cruise of the Baltics in June 2019. It was impressive to see Munch's painting alongside a matching sculpture of workers (not necessarily miners) carrying shovels.

British artist, Norman Cornish (1919-2014) is most famous for his drawings and paintings of English miners. His Cornish Pit Road reminds me of the sad figures seen in paintings by Munch and Van Gogh.

His pastels painting of Two Miners, supposedly from the 1980s, is particularly moving. He traveled 'Pit Road' many times to and from the mines for 33 years before turning to the art of painting.

Miners' Wives Carrying Sacks of Coal (1882), Van Gogh

Van Gogh painted coal miners' wives, who were also laborers. I marvel at the obscure Van Gogh paintings that I find when doing research about other topics. After all, he didn't just paint wheat fields and beautiful landscapes dotted with cypress trees and starlit skies.

Twenty-first-century artist, John Scott Martin, also from the UK, who has recently been making linocuts commemorating Cornish mineworkers (like his grandfather). Such workers mined coal, tin, copper, silver, zinc, and even arsenic.

Martin's work is quite impressive!

In 2013, the City of Black Diamond dedicated this bronze statue of a miner, created by artist, Paul Crites, along with a 28-ft granite wall engraved with the names of miners who died in Washington state coal mines. You can read about Black Diamond history here.

Unfortunately, this year's Miner's Day was canceled due to COVID-19.