Page 54 - Studio International - December1996

in the world with some abstract design that he envisions. tains a number of pretty things by painters who were the
It is the perennial fascination of Leonardo's drawings of real equivalents of the poets of the nineties, more so than
storms and eddies in water that they look at nature's Beardsley was, in fact. There is an odd, unfinished
violence so unblinkingly, yet without any sense of painting by Walter Greaves, full of fashionable blue
alienation. china, and a nice twilight scene by Conder. In fact,
Many painters do, it must be admitted, manage to nearly everything in the show, however minor (and
ignore such issues throughout their lives. One such was some works are minor indeed) has an off-beat, subtle
Henri Manguin, a minor Fauve who died in 1949. quality about it. Whistler's followers have been neglected
Apollinaire once described him as 'un peintre voluptueux' —a too long.
considerable compliment, I suppose, from a man who The '5 Young Artists' at the I.C.A. haven't had time to
knew about voluptuousness. I must confess, however, be neglected. The show is sponsored by the London
that my reaction to the current show of Manguin's work Press Exchange, and the artists were chosen from the
at TOOTH'S was to wonder how any paintings could be so recent Young Contemporaries. Since this made a disas-
bright and yet so tame. Everything is, as they say, trous impression on me as on other critics, I was frankly
`solidly constructed'. The colour-relationships are well surprised by the impact of this selection. Tom Edmonds'
planned, each picture opens another window into an glass boxes full of letters still look well. The other four
agreeably hedonistic world. But how quickly it palls ! artists work in already established idioms, some with
This is a world without intellect, and therefore without more originality than others, but all with confidence
excitement. and panache. Ann Clarke's big bold abstracts show an
Whistler, that gadfly of the arts, could never be accused impressive gift for organizing large spaces through tex-
of being without intellect. The power of his influence ture and colour. Barry Martin's machines have a cousin-
can be judged from a small show at the ANTHONY ship to the once famous 'Nothing Box' which was a
D'OFFAY GALLERY, devoted to the work of his followers. fashion in America three or four years ago, but an
The chief excitement here is a firework picture by aggressiveness which saves them from whimsy. Mr
J. D. Fergusson, who a few years later was to be working Martin announces, under the heading 'Future Plans',
in quite a different, post-Impressionist style. The painting that he intends to 'witness the formulation and construc-
owes a lot, of course, to Whistler's own treatment of the tion of (the) a space-time era'. For a critic, such as
same kind of subject, but it also has a full-bodied myself, this seems to provide a good note on which to
sensuality which is all its own. The rest of the show con- depart. r

British painting at Monte Carlo
Alan Reynold's Structure on a Dark Ovoid, 1962, gouache,
19 x 17 1/4 in., which is included in an exhibition of British art
at Monte Carlo this December. The exhibition, chosen by the
Duchess of Leeds, forms part of the centenary celebrations.
Included in it are paintings or drawings by Henry Moore,
L. S. Lowry, Graham Sutherland, Michael Ayrton, Ruskin Spear,
James Fitton, Derek Holland, and Caroline Leeds, and a group
of paintings showing how lovingly the British look at horses.