Page 51 - Studio Interantional - May 1967

Only when I feel quite exhausted by it can I let
my pen run freely and confidently, with my mind
cleared of all irrelevancies. At such times I have
no doubt at all that my feelings find their natural
outlet in the sculptural outline that results.' The
show is especially interesting because it illustrates
very fully the process which the artist describes.
It begins, for instance, with a number of drawings,
made in 1942, of the poet Louis Aragon, and we
are able to trace, through six examples, the
development of the artist's conception. The images
are gradually simplified. By the time number five
is reached, only a mask remains, and number six
is scarcely more developed. The somewhat dis-
concerting thing about this process is that it
involves a degree of glamorization—a rather
ordinary-looking sitter is made into a young Pan,
gazing at the world with pagan innocence. I am
not at all sure that I prefer this image to the one
the artist began with, and the exhibition serves to
crystallize some of the doubts which I already had
about the over-sweetness and easiness of Matisse's
art. Nevertheless, the show is a fascinating one—
not least because it serves to localize the source of
borrowings which one has long suspected.

Another case where borrowings become import-
ant is the one-man show (his first) of Roland
Piché's work at the MARLBOROUGH-NEW LONDON
GALLERY. Piché was the odd man out at the 'New
Generation' show of sculpture held at the White-
chapel in 1965—this was so for all kinds of reasons,
but chiefly because he rejected the clean-cut,
rather mechanistic look and went for something
much more organic, even visceral. His work has
developed since then, chiefly in the direction of
finding ways to discard the space-frame he used to
be so dependent on. In this, Piché has followed the
path already beaten for him by Francis Bacon,
and it seems peculiarly appropriate that his exhibi-
tion should succeed Bacon's triumphant showing
in the same gallery. Confronted by the close
similarity between the two artists it's a little diffi-
cult to make up one's mind about Piché's talent.
Original in terms of his own generation, he is not,
it seems to me, completely original in sensibility.
He follows the vocabulary of forms which Bacon
has established for him a little too closely. On
the other hand, it is not a case of a painter follow-
ing another painter, but of a sculptor accepting
hints from a different art: the three-dimensional
quality of the forms is very striking.

Hundertwasser, at the HANOVER GALLERY, is
another 'second generation' artist—a child of the
marriage of Klee and Schiele. I form the impression
that Hundertwasser's work has become more con-
cerned with figurative imagery just recently, not
always to its benefit. Certainly the drawing of
some of the big heads which appear in the pictures

Top Pol Bury Juillet Aout 1966
Gallery shot of William Tucker's 1967 show.
Untitled steel sculptures