Page 17 - Studio International - July 1966

and high sophistication, making demands on the specta- May 23, p.m.
tor's conception not so much of what is acceptable as of HAMMERSMITH Francis Morland is a sculptor whose
what may be physically accommodated. One essential idiom is close to the artists in the already famous New
for me in accepting this kind of painting is a high Generation exhibition of last year. He works in the same
standard of sheer perfectionism in the handling. If there materials (P.R.F.G. finished in coats of cellulose paint)
are to be two or three things only in a painting then they and also teaches at St Martin's, where Bolus, Annesley,
must all be immaculately done. Knowles's paintings are Scott, King and Tucker are among his colleagues. Un-
still crude. Like the self-taught artists of an older genera- like these however his career as a sculptor has a past as
tion his paintings have an amateurish look, so that one is well as a present and a putative future; he is not able to
made to feel that the straightness of a line or the smooth- say as William Tucker extravagantly did at a recent
ness of a colour is not so important as the seriousness of (May 24) I.C.A. symposium: 'There was positively no
the intention. I was reminded irresistibly of Bernard English sculpture to speak of before 1960.' Morland has
Shaw's outraged letter of complaint when his hand- worked in bronze until three years ago and like all who
painted and glued desk from Omega Workshops fell to have ever done so his work of that period is currently
bits after six weeks. labelled 'post-Moore generation'. Comparing the new
I am not convinced on the other hand that roughness in work with the old there can be few transformations of
the handling of these paintings is inspired by a desire to style more radical. The break is complete.
leave visible the traces of the object's human origins. All These large entwining serpentine shapes relate to the
too human, we do not need such reminders. Is it merely a work of other sculptors in this idiom, speak in a sculptural
question of experience, which training provides ? or of language which is familiar because it is to a certain extent
finesse and sensibility, on the part of the artist and the a shared language. What interests me is not the gram-
spectator? In this case, one naturally hopes time will matical principles of the language nor who invented
refine the process of putting these imaginative conceptions them, one can safely assume that Morland did not, but
into shape. At present though these paintings could what this language is used to say. Kiss, the only title of
appeal to a myopic business-man, but either not a very the four pieces in the exhibition which has a specific
refined one, or only till he put on his specs. human connotation, provides a clue to all. The twisting
and entwining shapes are metaphors of the body, head-
less, limbless, featureless, but miming the poses of relaxa-
tion or sexual intercourse like gigantic strings of macaroni.
I am not imagining the human associations of these
sculptures, in fact if I had not been told by the artist I
Francis Morland doubt if I would have seen it immediately. Fifth position
Fifth position 1964
Resin bonded fibre glass, pink however does have a manikin-like allusion to the ballet
7 ft x 1 ft 10 in. stance, though even in this case the finish in two varieties
of shiny and unfleshly flesh-pink emphasizes its air of
unreality.

May 25
HOLLOWAY My gaze on the work of my contemporaries
is mostly into another valley. Is the grass greener there?
Between knowing whether it is or whether it merely
seems so, there is the difficulty. Like the changing cycles
of wind, rain and sunshine, I flounder between con-
victions of my own scepticism, fantasy, and objectivity.
Actually it is not greener but different, a different growth
from a different soil.
But with Mario Dubsky's work I am back in my own
valley of thorns, or at least in one where I have been, and
remember and partially know. We were students at the
Slade together at the time of the unlamented domination
of thick dark figurative painting, the artistic M.R.A.
Speaking simply, ours was the valley of the 'Don't call
us, we'll call you' approach to form.
Dubsky's titles, Trebizond, Roland, etc., are descriptive
only in a tangential way. Though he has never been to
Trebizond the painting looks nothing like it, even by
somebody who has never been there. Roland (not Sir
Roland) was a friend in Rome, but all Dubsky's paintings
resemble nothing on earth so much as each other. In
other words, like many abstract painters, the titles are
personal mnemonics, convey nothing to us nor are
intended to.