Page 31 - Studio International - June 1966

Robyn Denny something in which British painting differs from Ameri-
can: there is no particular effort to look totally instinctive,
Born Abinger, Surrey, 1930; St Martin's
nor to achieve the American once-and-for-all, wholly un-
School of Art 1951-4; Royal College of
compromising kind of image stripped of all irrelevance
Art 1954-7; Italian Government
and complication. And this is largely due to a more
Scholarship 1957; taught at Hammer-
deeply rooted respect among British painters for the
smith School of Art 1957-9; visiting
techniques by which a painting is arrived at—for what
lecturer at Bath Academy of Art since
one might call the craftsmanship of painting. What is
1959; currently at Slade School of Art;
frequently labelled an 'impersonal surface' would be
in collections of Kunsthalle, Basel,
more accurately described as a pride in technical skill.
Tate Gallery, London, Museum of
Most of these characteristics could be traced also in
Modern Art, New York, etc.
Caro's painted sculpture and Smith's three-dimensional
painting. But what their work more particularly empha-
sizes is the concern for establishing a close and responsive
relationship with the spectator. One of the most funda-
mental aspects of that revolution in British sculptural
ideas with which Caro can be credited, is simply his
banishing of the plinth or pedestal and insistence on
spreading his sculpture on the floor, thereby making it
invade the spectator's living-space as assertively as a
chair or a table. Or rather as assertively as another per-
son. For although Caro's work has no figurative inten-
tion, and although he has said he wants it, however
lacking in apparent weight, to be as real and resistant to
contact as a chair or a table, what it is about is expressive
gesture and what it does is to invade space as uncom-
promisingly as someone's stretching out a hand or walk-
ing about in it. Caro's sculpture always tends to look big,
not because it has any mass but because its reach is wide.
It is a completely open-ended kind of sculpture, which
does not gather itself into any formal centre, but con-
tinually spreads outwards along its 'limbs'. Hence its
ability to enter into a kind of two-way relationship with
the spectator, enhanced by the long-distance contact it
makes with him by means of its colour and predominantly
visual, rather than 'sculptural', appeal.
Richard Smith's background of 'Situation' painting and
involvement in the visual-communication side of pop
art has given him, even when the precise imagery of the
giant cigarette-pack or Times Square neon-signs has
become less explicit, a continuing bias towards that kind
of visual presentation, styling and 'instant communica-
tion' in his painting which derives from his interest in
mass media. London has just had time to see his most
recent—and some of his most daring and successful—
work at Whitechapel before other examples of it are
seen at Venice (not for the first time, Smith's most
interesting developments have been exhibited in New
York long before reaching London). In these shaped
canvases, combining in their colour both atmospheric
illusions of depth and rich blazoning of the surface,
Smith's engagement of the spectator is effected largely by
means of techniques alluding to cinema or the theatre.
His canvases arch out into space, 'projecting' the image
on a frontal plane as if on to a screen; or else they simu-
late, with the aid of concealed fluorescent lighting within
the painting, the shape of a theatre proscenium; or in
certain groups of three or four paintings, they close in
progressively on a formal motif as though through the
zoom-lens of a camera, at each stage further emphasizing
the encroachment of a particular colour-form on space.
At Venice, Smith's most recent works are paired with