Page 40 - Studio International - December 1965

promise with the superficial; each canvas is a declara­
tion of intent: the world is a place of sand and rock.
its constitution is inimical to man. in shadow and sun
we live and we die. Harsh? Perhaps but even from
harshness poetry can be distilled.
Coming to the British artists exhibiting in November.
I find that the evidence is present of what might be
called a continuity of the tentative in the work of
several of the artists whose reputations have been
established in the past ten years. Anthony Caro.
showing several of his recent works at Kasmin's
Gallery, continues with the disposition of sections of
straight and curved painted steel rod and seems to
arrive at a suggestion of finality. Yet in a long scrutiny
of these' skeletal poses. the conclusion is inescapable
that any number of permutations could produce an
equivalent effect. This didactic exercise is not without
its inherent elegance and balance without however
straining the equilibrium to the point of tension. The
brightness of the paint. in fact. lessens the sensation
of weight in the members and also to some extent their
three-dimensional element. Visually, the appearance is
flat and from a single viewpoint the forms describe an
almost graphic design in space. It is this attempt to
create a free-standing design beyond the solid base
which has limited sculpture until now that marks Caro
as a resourceful experimenter in the 'marriage· of
sculpture and painting. This alliance is one of the
really new directions discernible in contemporary art
recently.
The tentative is so present in the work of Peter Blake
that several of the paintings in his recent exhibition at
the Robert Fraser Gallery are reproduced in the
catalogue before they have undergone further painting
by the artist. Blake makes many of his likeness of stars
of entertainment such as the Beatles and Jean Harlow
from pin-up photographs and as he has said he has
attempted to reproduce some of the character of the
photographs in the paintings. Others such as Bedouin
has been worked on for a long time in cryla and seems
even now incomplete. A particularly bright and colour­
ful portrait is of Simon Rodia. who decorated the great
Towers in Los Angeles with bits of crockery, tiles. bottles
and mirrors. One feels that Blake is concerned to
extract from the second-hand. some of the original's
presence and yet preserve the icon-like feeling for the
pin-up photograph that the genuine admirer feels.
Actual photographs are themselves used as collage
montage on some of the paintings with the addition of
toy soldiers. Doktor K. Tortur is a painting of an
imaginary German wrestler with coins. a cigar packet
lid. ribbon. a toy car and the damaged statuette added
to produce an effect that is not without its affinity with
the naive exvoto one sees in the church crypt of an
Italian seaport town. Like Kitaj, Peter Blake is a literary
artist in the sense that direct observation from nature
is not the sole stimulus to the creative act. Strippers.
wrestlers. boxers. pin-up girls are his subjects and
many are the transformation of actual photographs back
into the semblance of life that paint can achieve. It
would seem that Blake is intent to prove not that
photography meant the end of figurative painting but
that it can be used as a means of stimulating art.
Over eleven years ago a young London labourer
called Jack Taylor had his first one-man exhibition of
Peter Blake his 'primitive· paintings at the Redfern Gallery. It was a
763 Bedown 1964-65
Cryla on board great success but he gave up serious painting and sunk
30½ X 1 8½ in. his money in a window cleaning business. Then he had
Robert Fraser Gallery
244