When Is A Door Not A Door?

By Author: Leslie Jones
Total Articles: 4
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...we take a peek through some of art’s most creative uses of the doorway...

The door is a humble beast to many. On an average day, we encounter more than twenty; yet these are key architectural features which are most often made to be wandered through rather than dwelled upon. But it deserves much more attention – for some amusingly diverse reasons...

When you are decorating your home, or framing the front of your house, the material, finish and durability of the doors is an issue not to be overlooked. Even if you don’t normally pay attention to a door, you’ll definitely notice the benefit of going to experts such as Todd Doors. Todd doors will bring the kind of good timberwork and ironmongery which suddenly becomes rather conspicuous when absent...

And now that this oft-overlooked architectural feature is under our microscope, it begins to reveal ever more intriguing secret lives and sub-categories. Whilst our everyday relationship with the door of our house or office is usually one of absent-mindedness, the concept of entrances and enclosures, portals to new worlds or a symbol of enclosure and ...
... obstruction, has been fuelling artists and thinkers from Plato to J M Coetzee.

In 1950, an inconspicuous wardrobe opening became a door to a magical world of animal-human hybrids, talking messianic lions and warring witches in CS Lewis’ allegorical The Chronicles of Narnia. It was the dynamic catalyst for the shift from mundane life as an evacuee to fantasy adventure; a powerful metaphor for escapism amidst world war and also a thinly-veiled argument for Christianity.

Other artists have found metaphorical and symbolic doors in other realms, most commonly in the mind. In his 1790 epic poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake re-figured the mind as a building, full of locked entryways and barred windows when he wrote:

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

This observation has inspired some of the most famous artists of the last one hundred years. Blake’s concept became a cornerstone of the exploration of chemically-induced states of ecstasy and lucidity in art and science in the twentieth century. It was used most notably as the title of Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, a record of the writer’s experience of mescaline from the peyote cactus – which then inspired a little-known L.A. band called The Doors to worldwide fame.

The group, fronted by Jim Morrison, brought the notion of breaking through psychological – and social, political and physical barriers – to millions, with psychedelic pop and acid-twinged lyrics. Despite Morrison’s death in 1971, the band’s popularity persisted, with current record sales now over 90 million. It seems that a door is not just a door after all...

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