Page 58 - Studio International - July 1965

important to stress Kelly's interest in illusion of a non­ activity, or seeping off the edge of the canvases serve as
mechanical order. In shaping his ostensibly simple com­ an index of climate. They are cold or they are warm.
positions, he is causing a tense self-contained image to They are far away or they are close. depending on the
be born-an image that is frankly dependent on the adjacent tones and on the feather of her brush. They
two dimensional surface of a canvas and the imagina­ are symbolic of general atmosphere within which
tion of the viewer who can catch the nuances of move­ different kinds of things happen.
ment and full shape within. In one of two triptychs, Mitchell places a dense
Even when Kelly moves out from tradition, as he does central mass. dark and foreboding, as the receding
in compositions of two canvases, one affixed to the weight in a moist, marshy atmosphere. Delicate brush
wal I, the other on the floor, he preserves the sense of con­ drawing in the side panels provides counterpoint for
tainment. The horizontal canvas serves more as a foil the brooding central spirit.
than as a three-dimensional gauge. It is a completion In the other triptych. a rectangular. greenish-black
in the way Renaissance alterpieces were completed. form appears and reappears in an essentially musical
This is not the case with the young British painter sequence, modifying the spaces in which it occurs.
Richard Smith whose three-dimensional paintings (or The dark to light play within each canvas is carried out
should they be called sculptures?) were exhibited at both in terms of colour and weight of forms. The extent
the Green Gallery. Smith is clearly eager to avoid the of the space Mitchell describes is impressive, and very
implications of easel painting while yet maintaining familiar. She has told us about it before. It is her special
some of its magical powers. He has invented a hybrid experience, and must be read as the kind of obsession
form. Or rather, a hybrid form, which has sprung up that can drive an artist to maturity.
spontaneously throughout the country, has lodged The fact that she has been able to develop slowly and
itself in his imagination. deliberately within her chosen idiom without being dis­
Most of Smith's compositions are composed of ply­ tracted by the force of vogue in painting is much to
wood structures arranged to be seen frontally as though Mitchell's credit. While nothing much has changed in
they were paintings. The composition of the painted her approach, much has changed in the content. What
surfaces of these forms complements the three dimen­ more can be asked of a painter still relatively young?
sional forms themselves. The pieces then, are enacted During a dozen years of professional exhibiting, Mitchell
paintings. has covered much ground.
What Smith acts out is the illusionistic effect when Miguel Berrocal's recent sculptures at the Albert Loeb
various perspectives are painted. A stripe following a Gallery epitomize a trend in sculpture. Berrocal, more
rectangular. dominant shape which projects far from the than any other sculptor I can think of, carries to a
wall, when followed down and back into the dipping logical extreme the analytic tendency initiated by the
curve below, works in the way it would in illusionistic Cubists. Berrocal not only conceives of his pieces as the
painting. Smith emphasises this cunning ambiguity in a sum of particular parts, but in most cases. he makes the
vivid triptych in which three painted rectangular forms particular parts more important than the sum.
project from the wall in such a way that the eye not only By working out intricate patterns, in which one form
apprehends the real space between them, but other meets another or is locked in mortal embrace with
pictorial spaces induced by the coloured stripes painted another, Berrocal concentrates his attention on the
in perspective. necessary mechanics of interlock. When disassembled,
Smith's structures are rather clumsy and he com­ as most of these pieces are intended, each part has a
pounds their clumsiness by his thin and often inept particular functional shape. Often the dismounted
application of shrill colour. This may be intentional, but singular shape is more strong, more moving than the
I found that it distracted from the impact of three­ assembled whole. This is particularly true of the large
dimensionality and gave the pieces a flimsy, provisional pieces where the overall anthropomorphic allusions
look that the style he works in cannot support. tend to be rather hackneyed, but the separate divisions
Among painting exhibitions, certainly Joan Mitchell's are sculpturally sound.
show at the Stable Gallery was welcome. It has been In the smallest of the elaborately interlocked sculp­
four years since her last exhibition, during which tures, Berrocal is most successful. Here, the high polish
Mitchell moved more deeply into the heart of the matter of the bronze parts adds a magical lustre and abets a
-or at least, into the heart of her matter. sense of integrity that is missing in the more unwieldy
Mitchell established her idiom many years ago and has large pieces.
not abandoned it. She accepts the abstract expres­ It is obvious that Berrocal is a gifted, and above all,
1 sionist premise that gesture as symbolized in controlled inventive sculptor. Yet, his insistence on the essay in
Richard Smith
Triptych 1965 and less controlled stroking can evoke a range of three-dimensional logic which demands that the viewer
Acrylic on Canvas & Wood emotional experiences. She is at home in the kind of set his mind upon fitting the parts together is often to the
70 X 55 X 15¾ in.
Green Gallery abstract spaces, marked and divided by related events on detriment of his work. Where a hinged form serves the
the surface of the canvas, which bespeak both nostalgia sculpture as a whole, it is exciting innovation. Where
2
Joan Mitchell and fresh experience. She works with an essentially it only intrigues the mind, forcing it to enquire where the
Calvi 1963
2 X 2.45 m. tonal palette heightened by significant accents of cold parts fits. it is in the nature of a clever trick, more fitting
Stable Gallery white, moss green, rust red, prussian blue and occa­ for an art of fashion.
3 sional violet. Charles Frazier in his first one-man exhibition at the
Robert A. Howard These elements are put into the service of a vision Kornblee Gallery comes forward with a group of
Landscape XV/111964
Painted steel quite her own. Mitchell has a style. which is to say that bronzes polished to the maximum degree. Nearly all of
33 X 22 X 1 5 in. she has a consistent and poignant way of experiencing his sculptures grow from a preoccupation with the
Royal S. Marks Gallery
certain phenomena. energy potential in the spherical or helicoid shape.
4
Charles Frazier Most of her paintings can be read in an up and down Frazier works with solids and if his sculptures are
Untitled 1965 flow, often reminiscent of landscape. The white spaces endowed with mirroring high surfaces, they neverthe­
Bronze
Kornblee Gallery between rills of colour, or surrounding a flurry of less sit with considerable weight on the bases. Organic
42