Page 51 - Studio International - December 1967

The American lithographers, using the same basic given a new meaning, part-intellectual, part- patterned hats from the Battle of San Romano, jelly
process more inventively, give their images and nostalgic, part-ironic. There need be no first- moulds and ribbons—she uses strange worlds of her
obsessions a public scale, a mass-market appeal. hand involvement in works like these. The screen- own creation as areas in which to explore, medi-
Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns both use the print is in essence a fine quality reproduction tatively and thoroughly, her own emotional states.
lithographic process with an air of cool and casual which exists only as a reproduction. The 'original' A particular detail, blown-up to a large scale, may
nonchalance. Rosenquist, whose lithographs are may be no more than a handful of photographs enmesh us in a pattern of thought or response. An
for my money the most imaginative in the exhibi- sent loose by the artist to the printer with specifi- interior becomes the scene for a different kind of
tion, employs photographs as a form of visual cations, more or less precise, as to how they are to involvement. The degree to which we are able to
shorthand, retranslating their grain and tone in be employed: blown up, in detail, in such a make contact on this common ground varies from
terms of his wider, deeper spectrum of involve- colour, over such an area, etc. one print to another, but we are never in any
ment and detachment. His neatly juxtaposed If our lithographers fall sadly behind the Ameri- doubt of the artist's sincerity or of the depth of the
images express ideas—moments of consciousness— cans in inventiveness, there are many British emotions she is stretching for.
of great subtlety. Ellsworth Kelly uses the litho- artists who have made full and exciting use of the As a means of conveying ideas and states of mind
graph in a more traditional way as a means of great technical expertise and resources available the screenprint has enormous possibilities; its
future as a medium is closely involved with the
things it is not. It is not unique; it need not be
expensive; most important of all, it bears no trace
of the artist's personal touch, until the sad and
stupid moment at which it is signed and numbered.
The larger the edition the less we shall be able to
concern ourselves with the uniqueness of the object
or with the touch of the master. The less we are
able to think in terms of financial investment, the
more we shall be obliged to concentrate on
content.
For his ability to see to the end of an idea without
needing to unfold it, Andy Warhol stands out in
the Camden exhibition. His Self-portrait presents
us with an answer to all the questions we have not
yet learned to ask. The degree of our involvement
with the object is always greater than his; the
degree of our involvement with the idea always
less. The edition is of 300, but there can be no
reason, other than whimsy or marketing eco-
nomics, for limiting it. The source of the image is a
single photograph. The process of transcription
from photograph to screenprint is entirely mechani-
cal, or at least entirely predictable. When the
screen wears out a new one can be made from the
photograph. If the photograph becomes soiled a
new one can be printed from the negative. While
the negative exists the 'work of art' exists as a
potential. It need only be realized if we need to
realize it. The idea need only be embodied if we
cannot grasp it in any other way. Warhol needs
to 'portray' himself only because we do not under-
stand him. In order to see the invisible man we
transcribing, in a wider currency, his precise and to them in the field of screenprinting. Bridget need, alas, that he should first clothe himself. Even
poised sensations of colour and form or his superb Riley, Patrick Caulfield, Richard Hamilton, then we are conscious of no more than his outlines.
post-Matisse feeling for line. Gordon House and others can all stand comparison One of the more dazzling exhibitors in 'Trans-
Adolf Gottlieb's bursts of colour, which seemed to with their American contemporaries working in atlantic Graphics', Edouardo Paolozzi speaks of
so many in the early sixties so exciting on canvas, the same medium. Over a wide range of styles the screenprints in his new series as failures.
or Alan Davie's daubs and splashes appear there is wholehearted acceptance, in these British (Universal Electronic Vacuum is on exhibition at the
strangely embarassing as lithographs: like spon- printmakers, of the principle of anonymity of ALECTO GALLERY). If we can free ourselves from
taneous gesticulations interrupting the ritual touch, and a considerable skill and audacity in the the spell cast by images with a visual appeal and
dramas of a Reinhardt or a Turnbull. Abstract exploitation of flat surfaces and `posterized' impact as strong as these have, we may come to
expressionism translates very clumsily into a colours. The English tendency for subtlety within agree with him. The failure is in the process,
medium where the contact is less physical than compositional balance is manifested here with which, in reproducing the mental excitements of
that between spectator and painted canvas. These none of the traditional English compromise at the an age in which so much information and so many
unsuccessful attempts to transcribe the sensations expense either of vividness of colour or of tautness stimuli are there to be absorbed, can yet find no
and excitements of the painting could not be of line. What is particularly encouraging in the precise equivalent, in visual terms, for the activi-
further from the intentions of those artists who use Camden exhibition is the extent to which, in a ties of scanning and digestion. This is of course
the screenprint. The relationship between the two supposedly anonymous medium, individual voices only a failure in comparative terms. No one has
generations is neatly parodied in Roy Lichtenstein's assert themselves. The work of Gillian Ayres, whose travelled further than Paolozzi in search of a
Brush strokes, screenprinted in an edition of 300. tone is less strident than many but whose range is solution to this particular problem nor come closer
The painting gesture, frozen and translated, is re- wide, was recently seen to advantage in the new to finding one. For us it is the evidence of restless
duplicated endlessly, deprived of its expressive ALECTO GALLERY. Pursuing particular obsessions— search that makes these prints so intensely exciting.
meaning by the processes of manufacture and the top right hand corner of Crivelli's Annunciation, Paolozzi has constantly pushed at the frontiers of