Page 32 - Studio International - June 1967

moment; and in 1956 Patrick Heron himself turned to blow so far as some of the younger painters were con-
Sam Francis and Rothko to lead him out of a French- cerned. Paris no longer existed, and they now wanted to
dominated manner into a way of painting that had some see New York painting for themselves. In the autumn of
of the qualities he recognized in the Americans. 1959, Richard Smith and Harold Cohen both left
In each case this new direction proved beneficial to the London for a two-year stay in New York. Just before his
painter, and looking back one can see a certain inevitabil- departure Smith, with Denny and Ralph Rumney,
ity about it. After all, there was the example of Alan created an environmental exhibition at the I.C.A. called
Davie, who had evolved a powerful and individual style PLACE; the unusually interesting foreword by Roger
out of the early Pollocks he had seen at Peggy Guggen- Coleman recognizes a specific debt to the size of Ameri-
heim's in Venice in 1948. can painting.24
The big mixed exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in While Smith and Harold Cohen were in New York,
April 1957, labelled Metavisual Tachiste Abstract and there was another regrouping of forces in which Law-
largely the inspiration of Patrick Heron, provides a con- rence Alloway and Robyn Denny were deeply involved.
venient picture of the state of British digestion at the Out of this came Situation: an exhibition of British Abstract
time. Confusion between American and continental Painting, at the R.B.A. Galleries in London in September
European sources was strong, and the general permis- 1960. Alloway had arranged two important earlier
siveness in time bred a sterner reaction. But the exhibi- abstract anthologies: Statements, at the I.C.A. in January
tion was a necessary manifestation of the moment, and it 1956, and Dimensions, at the O'Hana Gallery in 1957.
included some artists—Robyn Denny, Gillian Ayres, Situation was different. Roger Coleman's catalogue intro-
Ralph Rumney—who clearly belonged to a younger duction explains that the St Ives painters were deliber-
generation. ately excluded as being not truly abstract and working
on too small a scale. Instead we had the younger genera-
Younger Painters While the middle generation was tion of British painters exhibiting enormous American-
sometimes rather publicly parading new convictions, type mostly formal pictures. Though there was some
most of the younger painters (those under thirty in variety among the exhibitors—Epstein, Law and Young
1956) were determined not to make the same false starts. made a little group aside, and there were independents
Their view of American painting was not essentially like Henry Mundy and Gillian Ayres—this general ten-
different from Heron's, but they had the advantage of dency was clear. William Turnbull's paintings now led
coming to terms with it earlier in their careers. To some the way, and much of the work at that moment seemed
extent they came to shun their elders, who, like any older tangential to his interests—the pictures of Stroud, Plumb
generation, barred the way of their own progress. and Hoyland for example. Denny, Rumney, and to some
Already from 1956 three students at the Royal College, extent Harold and Bernard Cohen, had all changed
Robyn Denny, Richard Smith and William Green, had considerably : we were now on the verge of what Alloway
begun to develop a very painterly style, certainly was to call 'hard-edge'.25 It was in part a sign of the
American-orientated, though possibly indirectly related ascendency of Rothko and particularly Newman over
to the new work of one of their teachers, Rodrigo Pollock and Kline and De Kooning.
Moynihan. They were in close personal contact with Situation marked a kind of coming of age, and although
Lawrence Alloway, and shared his enthusiasms. At the it had limited public impact, its importance is now
1957 Young Contemporaries exhibition Smith showed what accepted. With it the British assimilation of the New
seemed to be a new kind of English painting.22 American Painting may be said to have been completed,
There is at this point a distinct break between the and the turning away from Paris towards New York
q
generations, with the crucial issue being perhaps the irrevocably accomplished.
role of nature. Most middle generation painting (and all
St Ives painting, almost by definition) was landscape
based, whereas New York painting was not (Tobey here
shows up as a case apart). Smith and Denny," though not
Pop artists, were very interested in the mass media as a
source of reference for their work; the older English
painters were not. Was this a fundamental cleavage?
An ingenious compromise was proposed in the Abstract
Impressionism exhibition organized by Lawrence Alloway
and Harold Cohen early in 1958. Suggesting Monet,
Bonnard and the watercolours of Cezanne as precursors,
this assembled into one exhibition Masson and Tal Coat;
22 Denny's Blue Yonder at the same exhibition was another important
de Staël and Riopelle; Guston, Joan Mitchell and Sam
and beautiful work, with an obvious debt to Sam Francis.
Francis; Heron and Lanyon; Richard Smith and Harold 23 The exception is De Kooning: there is an interesting relationship
and Bernard Cohen. between him and Peter Lanyon which I hope to explore at a later
Abstract Impressionism was manifestly not a viable group- date.
ing, as the New American Painting exhibition, which 24 Roger Coleman, an R.C.A. contemporary of Smith and Denny,
played a role second only to Alloway at this time.
followed it in London some months later, made extremely
25 So far as I can remember the paintings by Richard Smith listed
plain. The 1959 American exhibition, far more vital and
in the catalogue did not arrive from New York in time for the exhibi-
more comprehensive than that of 1956, was the knock-out tion. Peter Hobbs withdrew his picture.
292