Page 49 - Studio International - June 1967

LONDON

commentary by
Edward Lucie-Smith

John Hoyland at Whitechapel; Edward
Burra at Lefevre; Bernard Meadows at
Gimpels; Tess Jaray and Vic Gentils at
Hamilton; Joe Goode and Mark
Lancaster at Rowan; Oliver Bevan and
Lois Matcham at Grabowski; Sheila
Oliner at Woodstock

John Hoyland's show at the WHITECHAPEL GALLERY
must be one of the most spectacular to hit London
for a long time. Abstract painting, as critics com-
plain, is always difficult to write about, and good
abstract painting is perhaps more difficult than
bad. The catalogue to the show points out Hoy-
land's influences—Rothko, for instance, Albers,
Hofmann and Morris Louis. In his excellent cata-
logue introduction, Bryan Robertson points out
the inherent ambiguity of Hoyland's work; the
way in which the various areas of colour are always
active in the huge canvases; the way, too, in which
the abutments of colour acquire a drama of their
own. I'd like to add some more ambiguities to these.
For instance, I'm by no means so convinced of the
totally abstract nature of Hoyland's work as the
artist himself appears to be. It's very noticeable,
for instance, that the shapes which Hoyland uses
have a habit of suggesting perspectives which are
then denied by the surface of the picture itself.
Early in his career Hoyland came under the in-
fluence of de Stael's late landscapes, and it often
seems that this influence is still lurking around
somewhere, though overlaid by the subsequent
American ones that I've already mentioned.
There's another side of Hoyland's work which is
puzzling—the clash between puritanism and sen-
suality which seems to give drama to so many of
the paintings. Technically, Hoyland often seems
deliberately gritty—his untidy edges and small ture and drawings. A lot of the sculptures made
splashes seem to be put there to discourage us from play with the contrast between polished and matt
indulging ourselves; and there's something aggres- surfaces. A Pointing Figure With Child had a head of
sive about his combinations of green and red. Yet polished bronze and an infant equally polished,
how these colours sing after one has considered while the rest was matt. In a piece called Help two
them for a while! The show looks superb when one angular matt forms were squashing a rounded one
first walks into the gallery; it looks even better which had been brought to a high gloss. The
after one has stayed there for half an hour. The imagery of this exhibition was of a kind which puts
ambiguities and problems that I've described are the critic in somewhat of a quandary, in that he
not resolved, but they seem convincingly part of a doesn't quite know whether or not to believe the
living and complex personality. promptings of his own dirty mind. I was much
struck by the sexuality of Meadow's work, which
No other show on my list quite lives up to this one.
At LEFEVRE Edward Burra has been showing some
Top John Hoyland Green, with red-violet, green, red,
recent works—large watercolours with surrealist
purple, red and orange 1966 acrylic on cotton duck,
overtones. These seemed to me to strain the re- 84 x 144 in. Coll: the artist
sources of the medium by their very scale (but then
Above Edward Burra English country lane
so did the big watercolour by Cezanne which was
watercolour, 31¼ x 52 in.
one of the star lots in a recent Sotheby auction),
but the imagery was often compelling. At GIMPELS, Right Bernard Meadows Pointing figure with a child
Bernard Meadows has been showing recent sculp- 1966 bronze, 30 in. high