Page 50 - Studio International - June 1965

The Academy, Armitage and the accidental

London Commentary by G. S. Whittet

In each overcrowded May the question rises: is the paintings by the most distinguished Sunday painter of
Royal Academy worse this year or am I ? The answer is: our day: the late Sir Winston Churchill, proving if proof
we are both much the same in toto with interior were needed that this is the Mecca of all Sunday painters
variations. So far as the Royal Academy is concerned, and that even the demands of another profession need
it cannot change much. It is subject to the statute in not exclude one from exhibiting here though it does, of
Parkinson's Law that governs the filling of vacant walls course. make usually another profession necessary. The
in institutions devoted to the display of art; the vacuum best paintings in the exhibition came from the brush of
must be filled which rules out immediately those artists the late Anne Redpath, who generously gave her
or most of them who can have all the walls in smaller talents to help prevent the mediocrity from swamping
venues put at their disposal once every two years or so. everything.
Thus the Royal Academy comes to rely only on the Others here who lift the Academy from its overall
goodwill of such as those to give it an attraction for any depressing non-art are Ruskin Spear who makes
who really care about art and even this is uncertain, for portraiture a personal commentary on the features of
the latter are perhaps prepared to look at the work of the the Archbishop of Canterbury, L. S. Lowry shining like
artists referred to only when there is sufficient to make an icon amidst pop vacuities, Sir William MacTaggart.
an assessment of their latest trends. Even for those flooding his canvas with prismatic light. Jan H. Eversen,
Academicians who cannot or will not show in com­ proving that if you wish to paint like a Dutch still life
mercial galleries, the quota of six is scarcely sufficient to master it does no harm to live in Holland, Kyffin
give a reliable modular of progress or otherwise. Williams, treating landscape and portraiture with equal
To begin with, the tributes that the Academy pays to its reliance on the impact of an image reduced to essentials.
own is this year the keynote. Three dark brown portraits Roger de Grey becoming a vibrant 'patchist' of land­
by the late Sir James Gunn dominate Gallery Ill with scapes, Bernard Dunstan carrying the torch of (but not
the Father McNab striking a convincing realist truth. By for) Vuillard and Sickert with imagination. Douglas H.
a nice touch of rightness the trio was flanked by two Anderson painting the Queen's portrait with the con­
plastically felt landscapes by a good artist now viction that it is her flesh and blood he paints and not
appointed A.R.A.: Peter Coker. Nearby hung six the washed out chimera of a smudgy half tone repro­
duction on newsprint.
Of the inclusion of Sandra Blow's stunning green
Pauline Brooke
Metal Sculpture collage in Gallery Ill and Peter Blake's Toy Shop, the
27 in. high
assemblage window, it is not enough to describe them
The late Anne Redpath A.RA as a new transfusion for the Academy. The experiment
The Poppy Field
Royal Academy I should guess is not likely to be encouraged, at least by
those artists hung in proximity to the Blow. Tolerance
after all is one thing but being a foster home for cuckoos
is another.
Sculpture as well as containing token memorial items
from the late Betty Rea and Maurice Lambert. meant
the head by Karin Janzen of the late Eric Newton,
whose death saddened his colleague critics and not a
few artists, the strongly original artifacts by Willi
Soukop in wood and metal, Sydney Harpley's almond
silhouette figures of sensual grace and the sharply
caught expression of Kyffin Williams in his head as
modelled by Ivor Roberts-Jones.
The Academy is a spectacle. As in any others the
shrinking wallflowers get ignored and the bigger and
worse pieces get the notices. British art. it is sure, could
exist without the Royal Academy; the Royal Academy
has proved time and again it can and will continue to
exist al most without art.
One could never imagine the work of Kenneth Armi­
tage being shown within the monastery walls of
Burlington House. As demonstrated in the works of
the President, imagery there must be firmly anchored
to the principles of Greece and if a theme is to be
illustrated in bronze or stone, the characters must as
always be represented in the form of a muscle-bound
Charles Atlas or a 'jolly hockeystick' Roedean gym
mistress. In his recent exhibition at the Marlborough
New London Gallery, Kenneth Armitage extends and
enlarges his repertoire of sculptures based on the
monolith. First came the work commissioned for
Mouton Rothschild in which the tower has frontal
shelves, then the Pandarus figure with projecting
trumpet horns of uneven size and shape. Now the
trumpet ears proliferate and penetrate a wall of flat
though uneven surface. Latest works include sculptures
where the human symbols are explicit. continued page 266
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