Page 43 - Studio International - August 1966

the queen's head, linked to the main image neither in
subject nor in style, supplies just that element of incon-
gruity which the Pop painters have always liked. The
stamp, in fact, seems to me to be a Pop painting in little.
But does this make it any better as a design? I'm in-
clined to wonder.
Coincidentally, I have just paid a visit to what is, I
suppose, the Mecca of Pop—the sacred city of Liverpool.
The Liverpool Academy, on show at the Walker Art
Gallery, showed a more lively and less wilful response to
the local legends than I expected. A big show of this
kind must, in mere justice, be eclectic—when painters
have so little chance to show their work, this is a service
which the local museum can perform, and it is better that
it should be done impartially. The result was a strange
confrontation between the swinging and the staid. If
anyone ever doubted that the Pop thing was basically a
branch of literary culture, this exhibition would have
helped to change their minds for them. Liverpool paint-
Above put in a very odd position. The painters seemed deter- ing does have a genuinely local flavour, which relates it
Invitation written and de-
• signed by and for Jennifer mined to send them back to their own vomit. It was to other things going on in the city. Abstract painting
and Ivan Dodd, drawn by interesting, in Design and Art Direction '66, to see what seems to be almost entirely neglected—and what was
Richard Weigand designers made of the formulae of Pop. The repeating shown (a slavish imitation of Bridget Riley, for example)
images, each identical, used by Andy Warhol duly was painfully weak. The most interesting painters were
Right
A paper bag for Elliott, Art turned up in an advertisement for Granada Television. those who seemed most closely involved with the legend,
„ director and designer: Warhol's prediction that 'some day everybody will think and most committed to it. They were usually better as
R. H. Wright. Photographer: what they want to think, and then everybody will prob- makers of images than as makers of works of art—though
Jean-Claude Volpelière.
Agency: Foley-Brickley ably be thinking alike', acquires a certain irony in the perhaps this distinction is tendentious.
circumstances. Another example of modish pop-artiness Sam Walsh, represented in the exhibition by a striking
was an invitation card from a designer. 'Psst!' it burbled, series of pictures which seem to combine influences from
in comic-strip lettering, against a background of Roy Schiele and Francis Bacon, has also painted a number
Lichtenstein dots, 'the Dodd's are havin' a party...' of huge contemporary icons—Beatle Paul, Mick Jagger,
These tributes to a prevailing style were, however, a William Burroughs, W. H. Auden. The combination of
good deal less interesting than the exhibits in the section high culture and low is typical of Liverpool—one sees it
devoted to editorial art and photography. Here were all again in the work of Adrian Henri, who combines a cult
the sexy James Bond girls, the misty landscapes, the of Pere Ubu with one dedicated to Batman and Robin.
merry peasants—a whole iconography of contemporary Henri is an interesting figure because he shows very
fantasy. Here, indeed, was the image of the good life. plainly what seems to me to be one of the characteristics
I am never sure how one ought to greet these images of genuine Pop—an indifference to the medium. Poet,
from the glossier glossies and the colour supplements. painter, performer, organizer of happenings and pata-
There is no doubt, to my mind, that they relate very physical events, he sees no real division between these
precisely to the kind of society we live in. But they are activities. Perhaps his best works to date are a series of
not simply a reflection of what we see around us. They pictures devoted to the theme of Pere Ubu—in the
are the equivalent, I suspect, of the kind of Victorian Walker Art Gallery show was a painting called 'Ubu in
genre picture which our ancestors admired every year in Springtime', where a portly, but somehow endearing,
the Royal Academy—they allow the same release of figure waddles across a carpet of grass and flowers.
Special issue for the World emotion, of erotic energy when we look at them. They Other paintings in the series show Ubu striding through
Cup, designed by are, in fact, a kind of commentary on all the things which Liverpool and Ubu on the sands at Rhyll—a tribute to
David Gentleman
modern painting has given up, on its deficiencies as well Cox, this, as well as to Ubu and his creator Alfred Jarry.
as its good intentions. Both Walsh and Henri are uneven artists, and the
I have often thought that one of the missing books in unevenness is a reminder that, despite the success of Pop
my library is a book on just this topic—on the icono- art, it is still very difficult for an artist to represent his
graphy of the modern world. The only trouble is that it own experience directly—which is what the cultural
would constantly have to be republished, with additions climate in Liverpool seems to require. Pop art is, at its
and corrections. I am always coming across things which most typical, full of ironies and subterfuges. Pop music,
seem to deserve a place in it. The new 4d stamp, issued on the other hand, is dedicated to directness, and it is
in honour of the World Cup, for instance— this seems to this which both Walsh and Henri are trying to achieve,
represent a sudden invasion of Pop into a territory without always succeeding. Yet there's a freedom, here,
hitherto sacred to stuffiness. The two leaping footballers from exactly that quality of artiness which I began by
(an image taken from a photograph) float in the field talking about. If the show at Liverpool was any sort of
with a looseness and unrelatedness very typical of a a sign, there is still room in England for a genuinely local
certain kind of Pop painting. The little grey silhouette of culture rooted in local things.
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