Page 44 - Studio International - August 1966

John Plumb : improvisation and discipline

by Frank Whitford

Born Luton 1927; studied at Since the important Situation exhibition at the RBA process of correction and addition in which trial, error,
Central School of Arts and Galleries in September 1960 the word 'Situation' has and intuition play an enormous role. Plumb used the
Crafts, London; first one-man
show at Gallery One, London, become a sort of blanket term for all sorts of British hard- tapes because he could rip them off and replace them
1957; subsequent one-man edge and environmental painting derived from American quickly but retain through each phase of the work the
shows include Molton Gallery prototypes. There has also been a tendency to see hard- immaculate and authoritative appearance of a finished
1961, Galerie Muller, Stuttgart
1964, Marlborough New edge painting as a conscious and almost total reaction and carefully controlled painting even though he was
London Gallery 1964; partici- against the romantic gestures of Action painting. A strict, progressing towards no definite goal in a completely
pated in Situation, R.B.A. geometric and impersonal manner must, it is argued, intuitive way.
Galleries 1960, Hoyland,
Plumb, Stroud, Turnbull, contradict the subjective and improvisatory methods of Plumb's most recent paintings (now on show at the
Marlborough Gallery 1962, informal art. Axiom Gallery) are the result of a method as improvisa-
British painting in the '60s, First of all, Situation was not an exhibition of exclusively tory as were the works of five years ago. They appear to
Whitechapel Gallery 1963,
Contemporary British painting hard-edge painting. There was no manifesto, and a quick be controlled and 'finished', but their language is by
and sculpture, Albright-Knox glance at the catalogue is enough to show how diverse now much more restricted and limited and their inten-
Gallery, Buffalo the contributing artists were. The title did not announce tion considerably more refined and concentrated.
an 'ism' but was innocently chosen to apply to the sit- Although not environmental in intention these most
uation in London avant-garde painting at the time. recent pictures are large and each consists of a single flat
Moreover, the idea of a conscious reaction against Action and thinly applied colour which is limited at the extreme
painting and Abstract Expressionism in hard-edge work edges of the canvas by thick or thin bands and lines of
has since been heavily overplayed. As Situation's most related colours. In the accepted sense they have no
structure. They do not create 'images'. There is no per-
ceptual play between figure and field and the two-
dimensional surface of the canvas is never denied.
In celebrating its dominant colour each painting is
`about' that colour and nothing else. This single colour
is in fact the painting.
Colour is the most relative of all the elements in paint-
ing. It is elusive, its effects are evanescent and, without
the benefit of form and structure, its qualities are ex-
tremely difficult to isolate. We can never, as Albers is
fond of saying, really experience what colour physically
is. The task Plumb has set himself in these paintings is to
isolate some of the qualities of a single colour, to trap, as
he put it, its 'inferences' so that they can be disciplined
to work on the spectator.
These 'inferences' of a colour event on the canvas are
suggested of course by the colour itself, and this sugges-
tion emphasizes the empirical process out of which the
final stage of the painting grows. To begin with, nothing
must compete with the colour Plumb has in mind. He
starts with a canvas of as ordinary, as 'banal' a format as
possible, because too unusual a shape would interfere
with the essential meaning of the colour. Then he applies
the colour which he has mixed himself or chosen from a
stock manufacturer's card. (Often, these colours look
unpromisingly drab in their 'raw state'.) As this colour
lucid explainer, Lawrence Alloway, pointed out from the then begins to suggest certain qualities or a mood Plumb
very beginning, what hard-edge work there was in the begins to particularize it by applying the modifying bands
exhibition shared certain close affinities with Action and lines of colour at the canvas edges.
Painting particularly in the way artists approached the These marginal additions are manipulated in a careful
actual business of creating. and very special way: too small, and the major hue
John Plumb took part in the first Situation exhibition expands to become too general and lose its meaning;
and then, as now, his paintings result from an improvisa- too large, and they intrude, set up a positive relation-
tory method and an intimate relation with the developing ship between parts and create an image. This would
work which does not at all contradict the final appear- begin to bring into the work a dynamic, a formal struc-
ence of coolness, discipline and apparent rigorous logic. ture which would too radically modify the personality of
Plumb is perhaps best known for the pictures he made the one colour Plumb wants to celebrate. Each picture
(beginning in May 1959) by applying pressure-sensitive is the result of a razor's edge sensibility which seeks to
coloured tapes to flat areas painted in standard colours. maintain a constant balance through all the stages of the
Formally complex and carefully structured, these works painting, and the battle against factors which would com-
look like the precise expression of a predetermined con- pete with the major colour is a difficult one.
ception, of a logically conceived mental image. In fact, Despite their apparent simplicity and precision, these
they represent the final stage of a subtle and often long pictures are very painterly. Even the broad expanse of