Page 52 - Studio International - March 1967

London commentary tion to the problems of the site. This painting, practical way. The result is a painting that
by Gene Baro engaging in itself, gains inevitably in our estima- stretches the confines of the room, even as it moves
tion when we understand its limiting context and the visitor through it briskly; in short, the mural
its explicit function, as the artist came to under- she devised neutralizes the problems and empha-
stand them and to deal with them. sizes the function of the site. The art of the paint-
The mural, 10 feet high by 40 feet long, was re- ing is understatement. Tess Jaray writes :
quired for a wall running the length of a narrow
I evolved a design which related absolutely to the
room that will function principally as a channel
format, using halfway points, top and side, and two
for traffic. There will be an information counter intuitively chosen other points, to be the basis for the
Tess Jaray's roughly opposite the mural, but not going its total design.
distance, and a short staircase at the right, as one The final design, I believe, changes as one walks
mural for faces the painting, corresponding to part of the along it. From the side the directions clarify (like the
picture space. Such depth as the room has will be skull in Holbein's Ambassadors?) and each area moves
Expo 67 compromised, and the arrangement of the stair- and changes and in turn becomes part of the next. I
case, underscoring part of the mural, must tend, would like it to appear very simple at first glance, but
all things being equal, to unbalance it. on closer inspection to work as an insoluble puzzle
painting, in part ceiling, in part floor—parallel lines,
The room space is such that the mural can never
non-parallel lines, squares in perspective, stars moving
be seen frontally and may only be seen completely
We have become accustomed to thinking of art into triangles, etc., etc.
from one point, at an angle. Miss Jaray's initial This way it can work entirely environmentally as a
chiefly as a personal expression or statement, in
temptation, given these unhappy conditions, was wall (with only a one-foot space at either end and above)
which the artist devises his rules and takes his
to think of the wall segmentally, as having three or as something to be looked at and enjoyed, depending
meaningful decisions as he goes along. This is
sections; some of the spatial problems might be on the circumstances of the viewer.
particularly true of our notion of painting; modern
solved by separate but related designs. But she The colour was also chosen with this in mind, the
practice has tended to emphasize both spontaneity
soon decided that this method was only an evasion blues and reds working separately in close up, and
and arbitrariness and to pass these values along slightly optically as mauve from a distance. The muted
of the challenge of the long format. What was
to the spectator. The idea that painting might be tones were chosen because, as the wall dominates the
wanted, she determined finally, was an opposite
fully conceptualized and meticulously planned small space concerned, I felt that high key colours used
emphasis, a unified design that would work as a
well before execution does not so often occur to on such a large scale would crowd and jar the eye.
totality, while it could also be experienced satis-
us when much of our art seems to deny composi-
factorily in passing, as evolving visual episodes. The mural's force and discretion are inseparable.
tion and to indulge broad gestures or is all-of-a-
The very shallowness of the room might be Miss Jaray has managed a characteristic inde-
piece in simplification.
thought to serve this artist's visual preoccupations. pendent visual statement that has also brilliant
We no longer take much of our pleasure from the
Tess Jaray's paintings are often concerned with aptness to its site. The painting exists as it does in
ingenuities of art. We do not attend its analytic
illusionistic perspective and expressions of spatial spite of, but also because of, problems of space and
intellectual quality, its problem-solving capacity,
ambiguity. The mural commission gave her the placement. There's pleasure in the paradox, and
except in a general way; instead, we are interested
chance to exercise these interests in an entirely there's art there.
in the artist's attitudes and premises.
In the past, the understanding of artistic skill
fed the viewer's delight. How the artist fitted his
work to limitation, how he exploited foreknown
conditions or met explicit requirements, was a
conscious part of the aesthetic experience. How
Michelangelo dealt with the Sistine Ceiling as a
space to be filled was at least as moving and as
satisfying to his contemporary audience as what
he painted there. Artists of his day worked to com-
mission and specification; they had to find their
freedom through order or within it. From the
nineteenth century, artists have more often been
entrepreneurs; they have created both the work
and the market for it. Today's artists seem to
develop personal order from the chaos of an equally
personal freedom.
But a moment's reflection tells us that no art is
truly free. The size of the studio, the shape of the
canvas, the painter's energies are all limiting
factors of a kind. There are surely dozens of others,
more or less exacting. Whether we are prepared to
recognize the fact or not, art is circumstantial and
involves aptness. Art is compromise.
This said, perhaps it is time to readmit resource-
ful forethought and the challenge well met to be
criteria for the judgement of art when their case
applies. I am thinking now of Tess Jaray's recently
completed mural for the Information area of the
British Pavilion at Montreal's Exposition 67. Here
is a work very much in the artist's established
visual mode, wholly consistent with her developed
interests, that is also a strikingly successful solu-
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