Rima's Wall

The Artist at Work on Rima's Wall
© Anne-Katrin Purkiss, 1992

Photograph of Rima's Wall at Palazzo Butera
© Marco Cassina 2021

Panels 1 & 2

Panels 3 & 4

Panels 5 & 6

Panels 7 & 8

 From Tom Phillips’s description in Work and Texts (1992), pp. 102-103.

Rima's Wall, grew over the space of about a year, from a single autonomous sheet to a continuous set so long that I could only have half of it up on my studio wall at any one time. I recognised the original impulse to be the same as that which led to the Language Drawing of 1963, which, though less than a thirtieth of the size of Rima's Wall, seemed itself at that time challengingly large. Except for the use of colour the mode of working had hardly changed over the intervening years: nor had the sense of exploration.

The cue for extending the drawing on this scale was the chapter in H. W. K. Collam's Unhaunted Comma which describes the discovery by the heroine, Rima, of a cave beneath the villa belonging to her lover, Vellinger. In the story the symbolism is fairly straightforward: as the plot unfolds the somewhat Proustian Vellinger initiates Rima (via a series of rooms in his mansion which each exemplifies a different aspect of the cultured life) into his world of exquisite refinement. It is Rima however who, out potholing with Fritz, the violist in Vellinger's private quartet, uncovers the earthier depths of this structure; a primeval arena of sensual dance and sacrifice. The wall of the circular cave is covered with an unbroken sequence of enigmatic signs. Having entered through a narrow passage they glimpse in the beam of their helmet-lights the fragments of a huge design...

Since their lights hit only the middle section of the savage cyclorama the markings tracked upwards and downwards, swallowed in the gloom like receding voices.

The only purely literary element I borrowed was this last part of the description. I imitate the fading into darkness at the top and bottom of the drawing since it reminded me of that experience of discovery by illumination that I have had in caves and subterranean tombs.

The drawing was not made in strict sequence: it leapfrogged toward it present size. Rima's Wall, though a finite object as it stands, could self evidently be continued in any direction either in actuality or in the viewer's imagination.

See also an interview with Tom Phillips about the influence of El Greco on the making of Rima's Wall.