Page 46 - Studio International - September 1966

literature refers to something beyond the edge and bind- `Each one of his opening paragraphs draws the reader in
ing of the book, so I see figurative painting beyond the without violence, like a whirlpool. His gravity arrests and
edge of the canvas. In this way I see the gradual develop- keeps the mind alert. We feel immediately that something
ment of figurative art in great contrast to most formal serious is afoot. And slowly, little by little, a tale unfolds
painting since the 1920's. Nothing seems to have pro- whose entire interest is centred upon some barely per-
gressed that far from Malevich or Mondrian. The situa- ceptible deviation of the interest, a bold hypothesis, a
tion, however, of figurative painting since 1920 appears rash dose of Nature stirred into the amalgam of the
extremely different. The people that come immediately faculties. His head thus swimming, the reader has no
to mind in this context are de Kooning, Gorky, Bacon, choice but to follow the author along the train of his
and, more recently, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg and deductions.'
Rauschenberg, and the French painter Dubuffet. The following passage from Poe's The Fall of the House of
A great deal of figurative painting can be evocative of Usher implies the very thing Baudelaire speaks of: 'The
figuration without actually involving recognizable objects. room in which I found myself was very large and lofty.
One is Arshile Gorky's The diary of a seducer, which has a The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so
strong suggestion of figures within an environment. vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be
It is this kind of symbolism, or suggestion, that arrested altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of
my attention when reading Poe. Baudelaire says of Poe: encrimsoned light made their way through the trelissed
panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more
Below prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in
Knightshayes Court, Devonshire (1869) reproduced in The Victorian Home—some
aspects of 19th century taste and manners by Ralph Dutton, Bastford, London, vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the
from Eastlake The Gothic Revival 1872 recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies
hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse,
Bottom Arshile Gorky The diary of a seducer 1945 50 x 62 in. comfortless, antique and tattered. Many books and
musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to
give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an
atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep and irredeem-
able gloom hung over and pervaded all.'
Some time after reading The Fall of the House of Usher I
came across two illustrations in a book The Victorian
Home. These particular photographs suggested to me, in
visual images, what Poe evoked in that passage. Very
often this sort of train of analogies, references and
associations provides me with sources for my work.
v. The literary sources I have mentioned, or for that matter
any literary sources, are only another aspect of narration
• and figuration that interests me. Earlier I mentioned that
personal experience played a large part in certain of my
images. These paintings, however, tend to be more
directly figurative: i.e. they usually contain people.
What is even more important to me than the sources of
my imagery is the realization that the whole process of
painting implies a kind of substitute; a kind of substitute-
gratification, an illusion in contrast to reality.
Norman 0. Brown (I quote) : 'If man's salvation lies in
instinctual renunciation laid at the feet of the reality-
principle, then Freud is being characteristically consistent
and courageous when he offends Trilling and betrays
contempt for art, which he loved. Judged at the bar of the
reality-principle, the consolations of art are childish, and
they reinforce mankind's wilful refusal to put away
childish things. But if man's destiny is to change reality
until it conforms to the pleasure-principle, and if man's
fate is to fight for instinctual liberation, then art appears,
in the words of Rilke, as the Weltanschauung of the last
Goal. Its contradiction of the reality-principle is its social
function, as a constant reinforcement of the struggle for
instinctual liberation; its childishness is to the professional
critic a stumbling block, but to the artist its glory.'
Ultimately I can only adopt the attitude that any
imagery using analogies, references and a sympathy and
understanding of what Brown speaks of is bound to lend
itself to figuration. q
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