Page 52 - Studio International - October 1965

Derek Southall strips of colour dart and run across the surface in
Serendipity Bound 1965
Acrylic on Canvas parallel tracks with big explosions of light that arrest
70 X 1 2 X 1 2 In. movement. It is in fact when his design is more calm
Rowan Gallery
and restricted in colour intensity that his full force comes
home. Then the colours in pale and quiet tones make
subtle contrasts that move in depth. Morris Louis is the
artist who is called to mind when one reacts to this
approach on our vision but Derek Southall is obviously
involved very much with the problems of space, either
in the contours of the paint surface or the recession
that colour traces on the canvas can convey. There is a
point when both of these explorations will coincide;
which should be productive-of some ex-citing clfffiax.
Other proofs of the dissatisfaction of contemporary
artists with the conventional support was seen in the
Institute of Contemporary Arts where two young artists
were showing. Malcolm Hughes was working in
images that were subtle variations on planes super­
imposed on one another. Using aluminium sheet cut
in segments and adhered to plywood in a design that
seemed to combine the elements of typography and
town planning, he also painted tonal outlines to the
silhouettes in a subtle effect that was not always
immediately apparent. Weight and light reflection of
the metal gave an immediate material presence that
justified the step towards relief; symbolism as of a
contemporary heraldic iconography brings this artist into
the field of experimental object-makers, not quite
painters, not quite sculptors but in the borderland,
whose images are not the less valid in the ambivalence
of their materials. Michael Pennie is a more definitely
committed sculptor who using monolithic blocks
assembles them either in close relationships as one
mass or separated in groups that take on architectural
identities akin to classic Greek prototypes.
Eddie Wolfram, born 1 940, is an artist whose ideas
are expressed most fluently in words-he writes art
criticism-and in the foreword of the catalogue of his
one-man exhibition at the New Vision Art Centre he
confirms the 'destruction of the two-dimensional
picture plane'. Wire and celluloid balls are employed
with other materials in place of paint to create three
dimensions in the art works he produces. But ideas as
such are not the substitute for physical presences that
are productive of imagery; the failure of modern arti­
facts in effectiveness is not in their visual language but
their contempt for the very sensual tactile reaction that
conditions our responses. New attempts to arrive at
the similar ends that paint images achieved in the past
human-it is all of them and it is none of them for its have not succeeded in acquiring their authority because
exaggeration takes it out of the field of comparison of this deliberate employment of the alternative. But
with reality and instead remains as a paraphrase, a substitution where it is obvious goes against the grain
metaphor of the mortal condition. As Moore has said of all art; only an imagery in tune with the material
(it is quoted in the catalogue): 'It is only a great itself will create its own autonomy. To quote from the
humanist, an artist like Giovanni Pisano or Masaccio artist: 'The validity of any "visually aesthetic mark"
or Rembrandt or Cezanne who can express the tre­ should be gauged by its ability to invest the most alien
mendous power for goodness that exists somewhere paraphernalia of today to man's humanism'. But
in human nature'. It is no exaggeration to say that in humanism is not to be equated with a merely esoteric
twentieth century art Henry Moore is the one who calligraphy. Eddie Wolfram is concerned with the
expresses, if not the goodness, at least the strength and problem and it will be interesting to see how its
the dignity that survive in this civilization. progress is developed.
At the Rowan Gallery, Derek Southall was exhibiting Summer is the season for the accrochage in the dealers'
large works in bright acrylic paint in which the break­ galleries and at the Leicester, the Redfern, Gimpel Fils
away from the conventional flat support of canvas in and the Drian the selection of works by the gallery's
rectilinear formats was apparent. In upright pillar shapes artists or stocks of paintings and sculptures are full of
hung against the wall like the one illustrated the paint good things all the more interesting for their juxta­
patterns in soaked stains suggest insubstantial columns position with others of varied styles and sizes. The
almost like trapped rainbows. In the flat canvasses his Drian's selection was more limited-seven artists were
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