Page 27 - Studio International - June 1966

what it was capable of. (The 1960's in Britain have above phasis on the 'ambiguous' nature of the image—a word
all been a period when sculpture has stopped feeling a one hears a lot—and (by way of a concern for how the
need to make surrealistic references to the human figure work can be variously 'read') to an emphasis on the rela-
and painting has stopped having to refer compulsively tionship between the work and its 'reader', its 'spectator'
to landscape and atmospheric space.) But just as signifi- or its 'audience'. Bernard Cohen uses the word 'narra-
cant as what was learned from American example has tive' about his own method, stressing that painting is a
been what British art has retained and since developed process in time and employing his continuous line as a
of its own more European complexity of response. More kind of image for this continuing process: it tells a story,
actually goes on in a British non-figurative painting than as it were, told by the painter about the painting itself,
in an American one (which is not to put a value-judge- and the 'ambiguity' of the final result lies in the whole
ment on it—merely to describe a characteristic) ; and tissue and history of possibilities explored along the way—
this is not just a question of the kind of multiplication of some carried through to a conclusion, others started but
effects that one finds in either of the Cohens' paintings, then altered and perhaps buried beneath the accretion
but of the various layers of meaning, reference, and of subsequent layers of linear activity.
technical 'reading' of the work presented by Denny and Harold Cohen and Denny share something of the same
Smith as much as Caro, all of whom may seem to prac- attitude about the growth of a painting towards its final
tise a markedly spare or 'simple' idiom. image and the way in which that final image will con-
Among the painters particularly this has led to an em- sist of ambiguous or contradictory relationships between