Page 30 - Studio International - September 1966

Anthony Benjamin's new work

by Norbert Lynton

There is no need to speak of the beauty of Anthony material presented by his personal life and environment.
Benjamin's most recent work. As the advertisements say, His environment is ours also and, for all the emphasis the
it just needs to be seen. One tends to assume that all last two hundred years have seen placed on individuality
works of art need to be seen, but in fact the twentieth and the ultimate impossibility of communication, all our
century has been exceptionally rich in art objects in lives are threaded through with events and emotions
which the concept is commensurate with or even bigger that show more common ground than divergences. So
than the artifact, so that to know the work (possibly that his reflective art, essentially private and personal in
through reproductions) is enough. Duchamp provides many ways, offers itself as a vehicle for equally reflective
the most striking and topical examples of this. There is a apprehension through which we may hope to reach a
sort of double lunacy about making elaborate recon- fuller understanding of ourselves and each other—the
structions of, say, R. Mutt's Fountain when we all know essential purpose of art.
the thing so intimately already that the only excuse for To attempt any definition of these conceptual elements
exhibiting it at all is that there is no other way of exhibit- would be inhibiting. They incorporate attitudes to
ing the concept that made the original Fountain necessary. personal and social existence and at times actually
Benjamin's work is emphatically visual yet conceptual appear as readable symbols summarizing specific ideas,
elements play leading roles in it. He is among the most but they are not to be lifted out of their visual/emotional
articulate and philosophical of British artists and for context. They also, of course, relate to Benjamin's under-
many years his painting has been predominantly con- standing of his own previous work as well as to his view
cerned with giving pictorial form to thought. That is, he of art history and of the stimulating world of our urban
has not engaged in pictorial research as such, except in environment, and while it is obvious that his work
so far as his images and means have developed as his scarcely reflects the actual appearance of the ultra
Canarby 2 1966
Perspex and fibre glass experience (in the general and in the specific, profes- modern clothes and racing cars that attract his enthu-
6 ft 6 in. x 6 ft 8 in. sional sense) has grown and as he has formed ideas out of siasm, any more than they imitate the Sienese paintings
that captivated him six years ago and have continued
ever since to inform and confirm his work, these are the
regions in which the conceptual matter of his art con-
nects with actual visual events. But if it were possible to
perform an exact analysis of the non-material constitu-
ents of one of his pictures we should find that what is
loosely called literary content accounted for 80 or 90 per
cent and visual stimuli for only the small remainder.
In a sense the distinction is meaningless—how literary a
painter was Mondrian ? — but then it is the banality of
so much art during the last hundred years that has forced
it on us. There are signs that more and more young
artists are returning these days to the use of specific
subject matter, and there has even been an attempt to woo
the demon banality by meeting him with open arms. Dis-
cussing Benjamin's work, though, it is essential to stress
this factor, not merely because he himself insists on its
importance but because it would be so easy to mistake
his process as entirely intuitive and spontaneous be-
cause of the seductiveness of the outcome. It is not the
appearance of letters and words that make poetry (though
they matter more than used to be thought) ; it is not
merely the appearance of a work of art that is the work of
art. But whereas we are trained in some of the many
strata of verbal messages, and are accustomed to respond
intuitively to others, our visual activity is still curiously
maladroit. Benjamin's art is essentially poetic; the fact
that it is visual rather than verbal or aural poetry should