Page 48 - Studio International - May 1966

J. M. W. Turner entire pictorial vision. It is colour liberated from the form- less anxious about it all. Most painters who have seen the
Snowstorm, avalanche and making authority of drawing—colour conceived and exe- exhibition were pleased to see it, admire Turner, but see
inundation Exh. 1837
Oil on canvas cuted as the sheer embodiment of light.' little relationship to contemporary painting.
36 1/4 x 48 in. Thus, says Kramer, 'Turner comes to us at the present One youngish painter complained that the Museum had
A scene in the upper part of moment as an inspired precursor of the attempt to create not put enough of the earlier Turner on display, which he
Val d'Aout. Piedmont.
Collection: The Art Institute a pictorial style out of the materials of colour alone.' might well have preferred. Another derisively quoted
of Chicago (Frederick T. Kramer was not alone in routing out the influences, and Gowing's text, saying: 'Well, he was certainly a man
Haskell Collection) trying to shape a tradition for what is foremost on the before his time. The pictures look as if they were painted
Exhibition: Turner:
painting scene this year. During a television discussion the yesterday.' Still another, a British artist living in New
Imagination and Reality
Museum of Modern Art names of Noland and Louis were also mentioned. I can York, snorted: 'It's very English indeed. Not very wild at
remember a time when Rothko and others of the Abstract all.'
Expressionist generation were used as examples of the On the whole, painters have made a point of seeing the
Turner influence, relayed somehow from England. The exhibition and do admire the audacious genius it isolates
resurrection of fathers is a frequent occurrence here, in its selection of only the late works. They tend to laugh
although their moments of worship are brief. Who, these at the attempts of the critics to make Turner's colour nota-
days, talks about Monet ? Yet he, too, was honoured by a tions in his water-colour book prototypes of modern ab-
Museum of Modern Art show not too long ago, and he too stract experimentalism. Any artist with a box of colours
was busily worked upon so that he would satisfy a peculiar might have done the same thing, they feel. But they are
American craving for history. impressed with Turner's obsessions. The artists, it seems,
If the critics are at pains to place Turner once and for all do not feel the need to raise Turner's standard on the
in his historic relationship to contemporary painting, the barricades of modern art. Only the critics have to do
contemporary painters in this city are more sober, and that. q