Page 58 - Studio International - June 1966

Concentric circles

London commentary by David Thompson

Wojciech Fangor E171965 Peter Sedgley Tilt 1965
Oil on canvas 50 x 100 in. Grabowski Gallery Emulsion on canvas Hexagon: each side 30+ in.
McRoberts & Tunnard Gallery

One of the earliest worries one had about Op art was its images of the complementary colour, as you look at
limited range, not so much in respect of means as of ends. them? Yes, they do. What are these artists, Siamese
Obviously lots of methods could be devised for making a twins? Not really, when you get to know them.
painted surface flicker, dance and change focus, but Fangor's circles are painted, patiently and immacu-
wasn't that all they could be devised for? The Op range lately, with the brush: Sedgley's are done with a spray-
of invention keeps narrowing to a single end-product, re- gun. Fangor's colours are expressive, in the sense that
versing the usual potential of a valid new style, which their choice is dictated by the artist's personal feeling;
should promise ever-widening possibilities of application. Sedgley's are obviously that also, to some extent, but
I don't think this worry has yet been proved altogether they nearly always progress through the set sequence of
unfounded. Bridget Riley is still in a special position be- the spectrum. Given the other similarities between their
cause people seemed to recognize from the outset that her paintings, these may seem trifling distinctions. In fact,
work explored moods, sensations, experiences which they make all the difference between two almost wholly
could be different with each visual image. With most Op opposed types of lyrical feeling—Fangor's gentle, medita-
art, different visual images all seemed to boil down to the tive, relating to human scale, a poetry of hovering
same sensation. luminosity, like moonlit nights; Sedgley's dazzling,
On the other hand, how much is this just a question of visionary, beyond scale, a poetry of fathomless radiance,
all Chinese looking alike? Most new styles tend to have reaching out into the night only astronauts know.
this effect until we get to know them better—until, in Fangor's is perhaps the more conventional, though none
particular, we begin to differentiate between artistic per- the worse for that. He would be a sensitive and poetic
sonalities instead of lumping them all together, as we are colourist whatever his idiom, and his achievement is to
inclined to do at first, under the generalized impact of bring the Op idiom within the traditional field of what
the style itself. How often was it not said in the early days one might call the hand-painted picture, the brush-
that all Abstract Expressionists seemed to be painting marked canvas. Sedgley's spectrum-type colours and
the same picture? And after that, how much all Hard sprayed surfaces combine to make his work look more
Edge painters were doing the same? Gradually, though, like analyses of light. Surface, in the sense of any aware-
artists emerge from the style as individuals and are seen ness of the picture-plane, almost entirely vanishes
to be saying quite different things from one another. (`almost' because on going very close one suddenly dis-
Recent exhibitions of the Polish artist Fangor at the covers the grain of the canvas), and the effect of aerial
GRABOWSKI and of new paintings by Peter Sedgley at lack of focus is particularly subtle in certain hexagonal
MCROBERTS & TUNNARD illustrate a stage in this pro- paintings studded with pin-points of colour looking like
cess of familiarization. Both (among other things) paint projections of light through a pierced filter. But even if
luminous soft-edged images of concentric circles. Oh dear, this degree of successful illusionism makes one study the
here we go again—Op art and its obsessively recurrent paintings as if they were beautiful natural phenomena,
concentric circles. And do they come and go, and start the images still come across as something intensely felt
spinning, and ripple out from the centre, and make after- and surprisingly personal.