Page 56 - Studio International - March 1967

Ronald Bladen
Black triangle 1966
Painted wood
(to be made in metal)
9ft4 in. high x 10ft long x
13 ft across top

charged with being a woman hater, a libidinous presence, devouring the spaces adjacent and itself is a dynamic part of the sculpture. The
smut peddlar, and a leftover of another era. thrusting out far into the spectator's space to make absence created in this method of topographical
Yet, if these paintings do require interpretation, its stubborn point. The bulkiness of Bladen's piece illusion is of the essence in his conception.
it seems to me the interpreters ought to take into in the Whitney succeeded only in being an irri-
account the sternly moralistic undertones in the tant, whereas the acuteness of the angles in this Kawashima, a Japanese resident of the United
work of all the black geniuses (Genet and de piece is aggressively meaningful. States, showed a large group of paintings in his
Sade for instance). Lindner is no exception. If his first one-man show at the WADDELL GALLERY. The
mammoth seductresses, still corseted and trussed Another artist represented in Whitney show with thirty-six-year-old artist presented two series, one
as they always were, are maneaters, it is Lindner's a less impressive piece than most of the sculptures painted in lacquer reds and blacks, the other in
critique of the male that counts. Why have the shown at BETTY PARSONS is Robert Murray. black and white only. Both were based on a grid
males of the world made this cruel machine a Murray's tact in handling thick steel plate is most formation of squared segments.
l'amour? Critics also overlook Lindner's subtle impressive. What appears to be a most rudimentary Kawashima's orientalism doesn't stop with the
criticism of America, even when one of the paint- piece on first glance is actually a tensely controlled conventional up and down columns of ideograms.
ings, No, spells out his resistance to the same forces infolding of structural elements. The amount of It is endemic in his imagery which is almost
that revolutionized German painting totally committed to an endless cycle of variations
in the 1920's.
springing force Murray is able to pack into a com-
Allegorizing his responses to the contemporary position of only two cut steel plates is incalculable. on the ancient Yang and Yin symbols. Although
world, Lindner is a painter of tremendous force. Undoubtedly what isolates Murray's work from certain of Kawashima's shapes might derive from
the mainstream of structurist sculpture is his the kind of organic symbolism sponsored by early
Still the manifestos of the so-called structurists attention to detail. When, for instance, he joins abstraction—Kandinsky down through Gorky—
keep coming. Ronald Bladen in his recent one- two plates, leaving a half-inch insterstice, he fundamentally he remains within his own tradi-
man show at the FISCHBACH GALLERY exhibited always makes certain that the functional bolts tion, mining it for all he is worth.
one gigantic piece, Black Triangle, which filled the become an adjunct to his composition, covering The hardness of his paint surfaces, the clean
empty room with sonorous echoes. The inverted them and providing them with convex contours to edges might seem to fit all too neatly into contem-
triangle is certainly a simple device to call up play against the angularity of the main forms. porary taste, but on second glance, it can be read
uneasy spatial responses. Balancing precariousl yon In certain pieces, Murray appears to be cutting as an apposite technique for the presentation of
its apex, the triangle is an almost threatening his forms from a single plate, and the cutting the bronze-hard origins of his erotic imagery. q