Page 40 - Studio International - February 1966

Constantin Brancusi Brancusi is, of course, a very controlled artist. If one
Le Premier Cri 1 91 2-1 3
Bronze were looking for type-examples to illustrate the opera-
Height 7 1/4 Length 9 7/8 in. tion of Eco's thesis in the realm of the visual arts, one
Hamilton Gallery
would choose not him, but Pollock perhaps, or else
Dubuffet. Yet there is in this egg-shaped form (in the
Hamilton Gallery version it was made of polished brass)
a very private emotion, and this emotion was un-
doubtedly bound up with a certain ambiguousness.
The New Born is a brilliant invention—a head which is
also an egg breaking to release the chick; and as it
breaks, as the little mouth opens, we hear the first cry.
What Brancusi asks of us, if we are to look at him pro-
perly, is a concentration almost as absolute as his own.
And this concentration is not truly public, because it
makes us vulnerable. The emotion we get, even when
have begun by being fascinated with Cezanne. There we see this sculpture in a public place, like an art gallery,
are some good Cezannesque exercises in this show. is still a strictly private one, and it has nothing to do
Gradually, he developed into the kind of 'public' artist with environment. In fact, we know how powerful the
I've been talking about. He has created murals and has attraction of the sculpture is because it tends to
been concerned with large-scale architectural products annihilate whatever environment we happen to be in.
of the sort Ken Turner would like to undertake. This Too stern a concentration on the more public aspect
phase is represented at Signals by an impressive group also tends to rule out the kind of thing which goes into
of hard-edge abstractions in pure colour—the artist the work of Sandra Blow, who is currently having an
calls them 'Colour-Rhythms'. But then conies a change exhibition at the New Art Centre. Miss Blow is show-
of direction, and another group of works, assemblages ing paintings with a new simplicity—the colours are
this time, which are reminiscent of Jasper Johns and subdued, the tones range from cream to café au lait.
Jim Dine. Finally, in a series of collages, there is a A few large curving forms are broadly brushed on to the
partial return to a more 'architectural' art. Many of the canvas. This is obviously an art which relies on some-
individual items are impressive, but it's hard to accept thing entirely instinctive, and the artist herself makes it
all these changes as being other than wilful. plain when you talk to her. To me she said engagingly
To carry this investigation a stage further, into the realm that these experiments in simplicity made her feel 'a bit
of perception—just recently, the Hamilton Gallery were like the Victorians when they threw away their corsets'.
exhibiting, without any fanfare, one of the best pieces of She talked, too, of the sustained excitement which
sculpture to be seen in a commercial gallery for a very seemed to her to have gripped British art over the past
long time—a version of Brancusi's The New Born. three years, 'as if we'd all been at an enormous party'.

Sandra Blow in her studio
Photo: Roger Mayne