Page 43 - Studio International - July 1966

perceptual vision (the angling of planes in perspective, helped by having superb examples of exactly the kind of
the placing of highlights and shadows), which Alan sculpture they are rebelling against displayed to the
Bowness has compared to the processes of cubism. It is a utmost advantage beside them. These are the magisterial
systematized formal language which has to be learned groups by Moore and Hepworth, both veterans of these
and read. open-air exhibitions. Hepworth's abstract forms have
Only since about mid-1964 had Dubuffet himself started always breathed with the same rhythm as the trees and
fully to exploit a meaningful syntax for his own new voca- water against which they are here set, but Moore's Three-
bulary—the earlier Hourloupe paintings (the majority of way piece (points) magnificently goes beyond even the direct
those at the Tate, for example) were merely gay and very landscape-reference which still informs his two-piece
skilful decorative patternings with disconnected images reclining figures; it is more powerfully organic and yet
bobbing about in the general jig-saw effect. But with the more abstract, and completely dominates the exhibition.
giant coffee-pots, wash-basins, bed, wheelbarrows, taps,
chairs, and scissors of the Ustensiles utopiques, Dubuffet has At his first show at the NEW ART CENTRE Matt Rugg
given an entirely new meaning and imaginative depth to seemed exactly to answer the requirements of those who
his own 'celebration' of common objects. His aesthetic of lament that contemporary art seems unable to produce
`primitivism' has been left far behind, and with it, I what used to be known as the 'little master' — an artist,
suspect, most of the criticisms that could pertinently be that is to say, whose value lay not in being an innovator,
levelled against it. struggling away to be 'original' in a period without a
dominant style, but in expressing himself perfectly
Sculpture in the open air in BATTERSEA PARK is the seventh within an accepted idiom. Rugg's idiom was that of the
in the series which the L.c.c. so bravely and influentially painted wood construction, and in his new exhibition he
pioneered in 1948, and it comes at a time when British still uses it, though now there are overtones of the larger
sculpture is going through a particularly high-powered abstract shapes that have come in with the 'new sculp-
creative period. The trim lawns are accordingly scat- ture'. The result is slightly more straining after big,
tered with brightly-coloured cut-out shapes by Caro, impassive forms which— if left totally abstract— would
Matt Rugg King, Tucker, Scott, Turnbull, Annesley et al: which probably not carry enough interest in themselves. But
Left challenge pretty formidably the whole concept of a they are not left abstract : most of them are used very
Echo 1966
Painted wood and polyester marriage between sculpture and landscape. A shot-gun precisely, in a half-sculptural, half-painterly way, to
resin wedding between the urban-art idea and the pastoral- evoke industrial landscapes (factory chimneys belching
Height 31 in. Diameter 47 in. environment idea does have its moments—Caro, King, smoke) or a romantic image like that of a moonbeam
and Paolozzi in particular manage to out-face the reaching from sky to floor in a solid shaft. The images,
Right
Industrial landscape 1 1956-66 rhododendrons in bloom—but most of the exhibits expire reinforcing the forms and giving them the character they
Painted wood and polyester with a thin metallic twang when all the wrong references might otherwise lack, are economically but expressively
resin
Height 84 in. of scale, colour, and light surround them. This is nothing conceived, and the whole show has a feeling of quiet
New Art Centre to do with their intrinsic merit, but they are certainly not authenticity which is extraordinarily satisfying. q