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Michael Rothenstein RA

Gothic Moonshot
1976
Wood & mixed media, screen print & paint
21 x 16¼ x 5¾ ins (53.3 x 40.9 x 14.5 cms)

signed with initials verso

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Neither a painting, nor a sculpture, a relief, nor an installation, Gothic Moonshot does not fit into pre-existing classifications of fine art.

Before 1960 Rothenstein was best known as a print maker. The beginnings of boxed assemblages coincided with a shift in his printmaking. The use of natural materials and found objects, hand-worked and directly printed, is extended to incorporate halftone images reproduced by photomechanical or photo-silkscreen techniques. This inventive form of print is the back-drop of Gothic Moonshot.

Like Joseph Cornell, Rothenstein creates his assemblages from found objects but here the similarity ends. Cornell arranges surprising collections of photographs or Victorian bric a brac unified by cultural themes, referencing poetry, theatre, astronomy, natural history and so on. Rothenstein prefers to create more evocative assemblages, which rely heavily on a material's connotation or thematic narrative.

Gothic Moonshot is part of a series; Moonshots and Cathedrals which Rothenstein created in the mid 1970s. It is a pairing of two different elements, a print describing a crowd witnessing the contemporary event of the Apollo capsule being carried to Earth by parachute, framed within a Fifteenth Century style gothic window. Here the gothic window signifies part of the cathedral. The box creates links between these two great human achievements. Both rocket and cathedral spire surge upwards in anticipation.

Exhibited:

London, Royal Academy of Arts, Michael Rothenstein's Boxes,1992, no.46

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