Page 48 - Studio International - March 1967

London commentary
by Edward Lucie-Smith

The London
shows

Left
Indian painting of a traditional sort has recently Neil Dallas Brown
become very fashionable in London. But what Lovers and startled bird 111966
oil on board
about modern painting in India? It would be nice
36 x 36 in.
to be able to report that this was as brilliant, as
vital and as imaginative as the Rajput miniature
Below
painting of the eighteenth century. Unfortunately, John Walker
the 'Art Now in India' show, till recently at the Untitled 1966
UPPER GROSVENOR GALLERY, didn't do much to Acrylic on canvas
96 x 174 in.
bear out this pious hope. The lion's share of the
show was given over to pictures by M. F. Husain—
the catalogue note says that he 'is recognized as
one of the most outstanding contemporary Indian
painters on the international art scene'. The
pictures are figurative, and mostly of recognizably
`Indian' subjects. The style, however, has such a
flavour of Picasso that it's difficult to find anything
very original or individual to admire. Most of the
other artists in the show were younger and less
formed in style. The best of them is probably
Bhupen Khakhar, whose collages use Indian folk
motifs to good effect. The European influence
seems to be Klee, but handled with a reasonable
degree of wit and discretion. Tucked away in one
corner was an enchanting little painting on palm-
leaf by Jamini Roy, probably the best-known of all
contemporary Indian painters. This work—a row
of stylized Indian beauties—had the force and
authenticity missing from so much of the rest.
Avinash Chandra, at the HAMILTON GALLERIES,
is another Indian painter, but one who spends
much of his time in England or in America. He
has managed to hang on to many of the best things
in the Indian heritage without allowing himself of Messrs Morecambe and Wise. On the other, a gest the pictures of Bacon's middle phase. The
to become provincial. Like a great deal of Indian subtle piece of abstract sculpture, a composition in sense of menace is missing, however. Dallas Brown
art, his work is heavily charged with erotic sym- several units, by David Hall, who more and more depicts a strange, rather dreamy world—lovers
bolism. One device which he uses to great effect is seems one of the best of our younger sculptors. lying in the tall corn, a girl being carried across a
the old Indian idea of a form which, Archimboldo- Different from this again was a work by Roland stream, a figure diving. The atmosphere of the
like, is made up of other forms. Not heads made of Piché— an iron frame with something nasty trying pictures is slightly Palmerish—it all carries one
cabbages and turnips, but an elephant composed to escape from it, in his familiar manner. What will back to the forties, when a heavy, charged
of naked dancing girls. Chandra's work has gradu- students at Maidstone make of all this ? They can romanticism was so very much the mode. The
ally got subtler and more sophisticated over the hardly accept the whole lot, or react against it? paintings, for all this sense of déjà vu, are likeable
years. This is probably his most satisfying show to Yet such eclecticism among the teaching staff and highly accomplished.
date. ought to provide a stimulating environment for John Walker's work, at the AXIOM GALLERY, is
I wonder what anyone looking for a characteristi- young artists to grow up in. romantic too, but in a more elusive and allusive
cally 'English' style would have made of the recent Piché, whom I've just mentioned, has clearly been way. Enormous lozenge-shaped pictures, with
show at the ALWIN GALLERY—Work by painters and influenced by Francis Bacon. His sculptures often sparse and ambiguous images painted in equally
sculptors who teach at the Maidstone College of seem like Bacon in three dimensions. There's a ambiguous colours. In one picture, there is a
Art? The range was wide. On the one hand there touch of Bacon too about the pictures by Neil formation of three green shapes like loaves of
was the 'modified Soviet' style of Gerard de Rose, Dallas Brown now on view at the PICCADILLY bread—not flat, but carefully modelled. These
seen to some advantage in the big double portrait GALLERY. The smooth, rather visceral forms sug- skim through a violet heaven. A convoy of space-
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