Page 57 - Studio International - June 1966

are in America' —just after serving on the jury- for an impulses of this kind, when they occur in England, are
exhibition which was recently held at the American being channelled into constructionism. A good survey of
Embassy. The exhibition consisted of work by American current English work in the field was to be seen in the
painters living in England, and forms part of the mixed exhibition at the AXIOM GALLERY. One interesting
current American Festival of the Arts. I think that all thing here was the fact that a number of the artists are
three selectors—Gene Baro (himself an American), very young—something one would never guess from the
Charles Spencer and myself—felt a little disappointed confidence of their handling of space. Christopher
with the quality of the work submitted, which seemed, Shurrock's work, as much kinetic as constructionist,
too often, to suffer from just those qualities of softness and struck me as being especially interesting, and I was also
compromise which Dine denounces among the English. impressed by the Space ring by Terence Pope. Construc-
In fact, environment seemed to have triumphed over tionism does, however, put the art-critic in rather a
heredity—the kind of painting being done by Americans difficulty—he is reduced to describing his own sensations
resident in England is related far more closely to the of space, and movement, and distance. Particularly hard
current situation in England than to anything which is to locate is the vital element of artistic personality: why
now going on in America itself. The one specifically is it, for example, that certain constructionist works are
`American' thing was the number of realist works sub- so boring—mere pieces of engineering—while others are
mitted. Some of these were clearly related to the tradition so magical? The movement also has aggressively puritan
of Andrew Wyeth, a kind of precise but non-academic overtones which alarm me; 'magic', I think, is not what
figurative painting which looms large in America but I am being offered, and it is perhaps perverse of me to
which is, as yet, very little known in Europe. It seems to find it, here and there. Anyway, it's a far cry from the
me that a Wyeth retrospective is long overdue on this Baroque flamboyance of Topolski's Prince Philip, and a
side of the Atlantic. sign of the astonishing variety of the London art-scene.
Where American artists with a yearning for the precise, Just how far this eclectism is a thing to be praised remains
the utterly un-accidental, often seem to turn to some form to be discovered. Artists, I suspect, find it disturbing, even
of realism, it's becoming more and more evident that if critics are thankful for it. q

Landscape No. 2 by Allen d'Arcangelo silk-screen on vinyl, 30 x commercial environment,' according to Max Kozloff's catalogue
24 in. (left), and Allen Jones' Miss America, lithograph, 24 x 20 in., preface. Mr Kozloff's essay also remarked on the opposing
two of the prints in Pop Prints, an exhibition held recently at the 'hard-core' factual tradition in American visual art, and the
Chelsea School of Art under Personna Company sponsorship 'natural imbibing of an atmosphere that bemuses and cajoles the
and with the assistance of the Arts Council. The majority of the spectator with ever more inflated sensations.'
artists represented were from America—'a country in which the The Personna collection is to tour Europe, Latin America, and
folk tradition more than anywhere else identifies itself with the Australia.