The Golden Section is ubiquitous in Western culture. Mathematically, the golden section is that point on a line which divides it into two parts, such that the proportion of the smaller part to the larger is the same as the proportion of the larger part to the whole line. This requires that the line be divided at approximately 0.618 of its length.
Perceptually, the section occurs at the point where the length of the smaller component is maximally striking without challenging or overwhelming the larger component. Aesthetic experiments have shown that people find the golden section proportion more pleasing than any other. From the Great Pyramid of Gizah to the buildings of Le Corbusier, architects have incorporated the proportion into their designs. Musicians have incorporated it into their compositions. In ancient Greece, the Pythagoreans took a mystical attitude towards it, possibly because, like pi, it cannot be calculated: it extends to an infinite number of decimal places without recurring. Plato, in the Phaedo, described the Pythagorean belief that the body is maintained by a “tensive relation that exists between pairs of opposites”, and that the “soul is a harmony” resulting from the proper balance between opposites. A line that is divided at the point that forms the golden section may be thought of as the unity divided into its component parts, or opposites, to provide the greatest harmony.
Eight works are known at present to contain the golden section. (1) Six of these: Beau Gosse (1939), L’Ancre (139), Gouffres Amers (1939), Le Phare (1939), Rivières Tièdes (1939) and Scylla (1938) make up the Méditerranée series. The other works, Judith Showing the Head of Holofernes, (1929) and Self Portrait, (c 1929) both date from her days at the Slade School of Art.
The only other application of the divine proportion in her work occurred in 1950. In that year Colquhoun designed the cover for the journal Eidos, ‘a journal of painting, sculpture and design’ that only ran for three issues. Colquhoun’s design was based on the φ spiral. According to the editorial in the first issue, the φ symbol was chosen to represent the eternally recurrent rhythm of life itself: ‘being numerically related to the Fibonacci series which is fundamental in nature and unwinding in the proportions of the Golden Section which is fundamental in art, it has a creative as well as an historical application’.
One would not expect to find significant dimensions incorporated into the automatic works, save, perhaps, in the dimensions of the paper or canvas support. And, indeed, they are entirely absent. The conclusion must be that for a limited period only, the golden section was included in her compositions. It has the appearance of being a compositional experiment rather than a method of introducing hermetic significance.
Notes
1. Using proportional dividers or a golden section triangle and straight edge, I have measured photographs over 500 works. Despite the precision of the mathematics, this is partly a subjective process. There are several potential sources of error when working from photographs, which may, for example, be distorted or cropped. In some instances, such as The Four Elements (1928) a painting may have been cut down and the original proportions lost.
