Page 36 - Studio International - July/August 1967

which is central to his work—led him to arrange an many of the paintings. Their creative emptiness repre-
exhibition at the Hanover Gallery in July 1953 called sented a radical discovery, I felt, as did their flatness, or
Space in Colour in which he showed the work of ten rather, their spatial shallowness. I was fascinated by their
British painters, including his own. The long catalogue constant denial of illusionistic depth ...' (Arts, New
introduction which he wrote for it includes the following York, March 1956.) Together with various other
summary of his ideas : 'Colour is the utterly indispensable British painters of his generation such as Davie, Scott
means for realizing the various species of pictorial space. and Wynter, he was one of the very first artists outside
. . . Pictorial space, I have suggested, is an illusion of the United States to recognize the importance of the
depth behind the actual canvas. It may also be a pro- new American painting and to learn from it. Moreover,
jection—of plane or mass—apparently in front of the as London correspondent to the American periodical
canvas. But the existence of pictorial space implies the Arts from 1955-8, his whole-hearted support for their
partial obliteration of the canvas's surface from our work was of great help to the American painters them-
consciousness. This is the role of colour: to push back or selves at a period when they were still struggling to
bring forward the required section of the design.' obtain recognition in their own country.
Although he was one of the first English art critics to Heron's first abstract pictures done under American
write appreciatively of the Parisian post-war abstract influence were tachiste in character and consisted of an
painters (especially Soulages and de Staël) and although all-over composition of dabs or vertical brush-strokes of
his works of 1950-2 are sometimes quite difficult to very liquid paint, which was sometimes allowed to trickle
decipher at first sight, he had reservations for some years down the canvas. The brush-strokes were distributed in
about the absolute merits of non-figurative art. His own shallow layers parallel to the picture surface. As might be
first venture into abstraction was very short-lived: in expected, the earliest pictures were very experimental
July and August 1952 he painted a small number of and showed a variety of influences, including the
abstract pictures mainly under the influence of Nicolas dribbled, gestural lines of Jackson Pollock. But from the
de Staël whose one-man exhibition at the Matthiesen late spring the influence of Sam Francis began to pre-
Gallery in February—March that year had had a power- dominate, particularly in some pictures with delicate,
ful impact on English painting. They had block-like mottled patches of glowing colour. As the titles
patches of colour tilted in different directions to convey indicate—such as Garden Painting: August 1956—they were
an impression of contrasting movements. But he felt that partly inspired by flowering shrubs in bloom and were
the elimination of the element of figuration had been an connected with his move to Zennor, five miles from St
impoverishment, and he returned more or less to his Ives, where he had just bought a house with a very
previous style for a further three-and-a-half years. The beautiful garden; it was situated at a height of 600 ft on
only marked difference was that his post-1952 figurative the edge of the moors, where the ground begins to slope
paintings tended to be brighter, with larger areas of away towards the sea.
colour and fewer details (hence rather closer to the late These tachiste pictures were followed in 1957-8 by a
paintings of Matisse). more regular series composed of parallel stripes or bands
Late in 1955 he began to experiment with tachisme of different colours and widths executed in thin washes
in two or three pictures such as Winter Harbour: 1955 like watercolour. In these works Heron attained for the
(exhibited in the C.A.S. Seasons exhibition and now in first time his full liberation as a colourist, a lyrical
the Vancouver Art Gallery) in which the original romanticism and inventiveness which is illustrated by
composition was almost completely obliterated by an such titles as Incandescent Skies—Yellow and Rose, Strata of
over-lay of horizontal and vertical bars of colour. His Green and Scarlet Vermilion and Atmospheric Painting (olive
full conversion to non-figuration did not take place, and green). Their seductive colours, laid on in loose
however, until January 1956 and it occurred not under overlapping washes, produce a shallow spatial un-
the influence of the School of Paris but of American dulation. Several of the earliest ones are reminiscent
Abstract Expressionism. Although Heron had not been to some extent of Rothko's pictures, although they
to New York at this stage (he had been awarded a tend to be narrower and to have a greater number of
travelling scholarship to the United States in 1950 but colour bands, but the series as a whole is quite different.
had decided at the last minute not to go) he had seen A picture like Vertical Light: March 1957 even antici-
and admired works by several of the leading painters at pates the stripe paintings of Morris Louis which were not
the I.C.A. and elsewhere in London, particularly paint- executed until several years later, though it is looser and
ings by Pollock, Tobey and Sam Francis. What served as more 'soft-edged' in construction. Nevertheless, the colour
the real turning-point for him was, however, the exhibi- stripes are placed side by side like bands of coloured
tion of Modern Art in the United States at the Tate Gallery light. He eventually stopped painting stripe pictures in
in January—February 1956, which brought together the summer of 1958 when he realized that they bore a
paintings by a number of the principal figures in the slight resemblance to sunset over the sea—the kind of
movement, including de Kooning, Motherwell, Pollock, effect which could often be observed from his house at
Rothko, Tobey and Tomlin. Whereas he had previously Zennor and which may have influenced him subcon-
been obsessed by Braque and Matisse, he now saw in the sciously.
new American painting a revolutionary move away from The pictures which provided the starting-point for his
Cubism, opening up exciting new possibilities. 'I was next phase were a few works of 1957, such as Red
instantly elated,' he wrote at the time, 'by the size, Ground: May 1957, which contained both vertical and
energy, originality, economy, and inventive daring of horizontal patches distributed over a ground of more or