Page 49 - Studio International - July/August 1967

Above idea that will kick the spectator below the belt. To that ankle back into the picture plane while the male trouser
Sheer magic 1967 end, therefore, he has adopted the fetish leg, a proven leg ends in an ooze of pigment on the ledge. This gesture is
canvas and shelf potent emotive form, packed and energized it, and banged Jones' comment on his role as creator. It compares the
3 x 3 ft and shelf
it across in a brazen, almost unacceptable manner. Yet tactile and physical realities of the medium and the
Above right the erotic subject pressed towards its farthest limits is creation. At the same time, the effusion of fluid substance
Drama 1966-7 only a spring-board for the artist's broader speculations can be considered symbolic of the sexual under-pinning
canvas and shelf
on the psycho-sexual nature of creativity. of creativity.
3 x 3 ft and shelf
There are two worthwhile subjects of painting today: Other paintings of the current series are elevated to
the process of art itself and the self-revelation of the meanings surpassing the erotic source material by differ-
artist. Allen Jones paints them both. For him, art is 'a ent ideographs. In two, the female torso above the legs is
slightly mystical occupation', and the canvas a field for absorbed by a coloured haze, reminiscent of the sensuous
the free play of ideas and spontaneous discoveries about cloud caressing Io in Correggio's Jupiter and Io. In
his art and himself. He has always painted intuitively and Sheer Magic a flat, spiral colour wheel-mandala gives rise
automatically, enriching his subject matter with a per- to a columnar foot. A spatial ellipse of discs and eyes
sonal, symbolic language so that meaning is left open to surrounds a pair of stockinged legs in a fourth. These
interpretation, confident that acute discipline of forms symbols and the rest of his metaphoric language are a
and structure would be the ultimate control of his state- spontaneous manifestation of Jones' inner vision. He has
ment. Even the Buses of 1962-3, with which he made his never sought a symbol because formal necessity and the
name, were not so much idiomatic Pop subjects as automatism of his creative method produce in combina-
implicitly sexual vehicles : the early, semi-automatic tion the interior reality. Nor does he assign a specific
sketches for the buses included couples embracing inside, connotation to the symbol. Jones intends not to transmit
and as the idea progressed, the lovers were translated a limited message to a tuned-in receiver, but rather the
into motion. As the couples disappeared, the canvases widest range of meaning to the largest possible audience,
slanted to represent speed. From that time, Jones' and his vocabulary draws its profound expressivity
dominant theme has been the expression of sexuality largely from the various combinations and contexts in
through motion—using aeroplanes, parachutists and fall- which it occurs and its syntactic relation to other forms.
ing figures. More overtly sexual are Jones' frequent Indeed, the only value of such instinctive self-revelation
hermaphrodites—not creatures of indeterminate sex but as Jones paints is that it should transcend mere intellec-
vigorously male and female elements commingled. tual comprehension for a more embracing communica-
In such a work as Drama the hermaphroditic motif tion through mysterious, but very human, resonances of
appears in the fully-modelled female leg played against sensation and emotion as well as thought.
a flatly caricatured trouser leg. Where the canvas meets Though he had been painting in this stream-of-conscious-
the ledge, the sleek volumes of the leg dissolve below the ness manner since at least 1961 (cf. The Artist Thinks), it