Page 54 - Studio International - April 1965

Pop, op and now return to fig

London Commentary by G. S. Whittet

Optical painting having ousted 'pop' in recent trend-
following, it now seems as if figuration even of a per-
sonal and sometimes decorative nature is coming
slowly into its own again. It has never ceased to be
practised by certain artists but generally they have been
those ignored by the Establishment. Cecil Collins,
showing his recent paintings at Tooth's Gallery, is an
artist to whom subject is paramount and it is a meta-
physical theme that is expressed in each of his panels.
Angels recur frequently and Kathleen Raine describes
his paintings as 'icons' in her catalogue introduction.
Despite influences direct and acknowledged from
Picasso and Klee, it is none the less to William Blake
that we find our visual memory turning. Like Blake,
Collins sees his figures at large in a landscape that is
not explicit but merely a background of misty and celes-
tial light. Not all of the figures we see are of a holy
iconography. In Fool and Woman of 1960 there is a
secular joy that is as lighthearted as any of Picasso's
Artist and Model drawings.
While Cecil Collins rejects the theory of 'pure art' it is
none the less evident that he enjoys a freedom of
handling and an uninhibited flow of colour that pays
little respect to the tight conventions of post-Impres-
sionist figure compositions that have reigned for so
long in this country. And since pictures only reflect the
experiences already in the eye of the spectator, without
knowing all the content that has inspired the artist, we
are capable of enjoying each work on a completely free
level. The end is Cecil Collins' most successful exhibi-
tion to date. Compared with the static myths aligned to
the Etruscan tombs composed by Campigli, Collins
seems to set his figures afloat across backgrounds of
swirling vari-coloured mists in legends that are rooted
in Celtic folk lore.
Friso ten Holt last showed in London at the Marl-
borough New London Gallery in 1962. His latest ex-

hibition at the same venue tokens a consistent develop-
ment within the limits he has set himself or that have
been imposed on him by his own choice. The Dutch
artist shows primarily a taste for colours that are so pale
that they immediately conjure up the atmosphere of the
North Sea and its beaches which are in fact the motives
of most of his canvases. But the figures of bathers on the
beaches have in fact no more solidity than the water
that is their backgrounds. The 'touches' of paint suggest
the contours and the weights of the masses but with an