Page 21 - Studio International - July 1966

with architecture and sculpture and difficult to bring off
pictorially, where forms all have the same physical weight,
or no weight. Like an illustration of velocity in a physics
text-book there is a danger of being comprehended on
an intellectual level only. Or on the contrary of the idea
being dissipated into Art. But Lever painting, more success-
ful than the others by being stripped to essentials, does
succeed in getting across to the imagination. Scatola on
the other hand, Carter's free-standing coloured box with
a roll-top, is a more decorative object altogether and
seems to me could be by anybody.

May 29
CAMDEN TOWN Douglas Binder's paintings look among
the most satisfying and successful in this company, the
reason surely involves the fact that they are among the
least pretentious. In his studio the paintings take their
place alongside the assorted chests of drawers, chairs and
John Carter Lever painting 1966 cabinets all decorated in the attractive highly coloured
P.V.A. on panel with hinge 60 x 144 in. manner which he and his partners have in a short period
evolved into a popular and thriving concern, potentially
even a sizeable industry. Customers have called at the
studio and left with a piece of furniture and a painting
(temporarily renamed 'decorative wall-panel') to go with
it. There is no conventional Fine Art distinction between
the two kinds of objects.
There is a similar fascination in Binder's paintings as in
Patrick Caulfield's, the period allusions to the Thirties.
In Binder's case it is the abstract decorative styles of the
period, in Caulfield's the illustrative style, but in both the
Douglas Binder Kingy 1966
Oil on canvas 72 x 72 in. fascination is in not knowing whether the motive of the
artist is a question of satire or nostalgia or something else.
More significant still is the parallel between both artists
in the way that recent paintings have up-dated the style,
and like Caulfield's picture of a Hepworth-type sculpture
in a landscape in which the affectionate-satirical stance is
left even more in doubt, so in Binder's Game with assorted
shapes there are references to the painted dribble which
runs from top to bottom of the canvas, ending in a
spreading pool of paint, which make a witty commentary
on the similar shapes to be found in the paintings of Paul
Huxley.
Binder's colour is uncompromisingly hot, a personal
spectrum which sets a distance between identification
with the period and the present of seeing the picture.
The charm of these paintings on one level as a decorative
style should not confuse one as to their detachment. Later
this year Binder and his partners are designing the Honda
stand for a big Motor Show in San Francisco; this
adaptability to Life gives Binder's art its vitality. He will
be in it, of it, and out of it all in one, before you can say
Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamlined etc .... q