Page 35 - Studio International - October 1967

thing. Elsewhere, various degrees of homage were to be while. Richard Smith's shaped canvases and painted
noted, intelligent, sensitive, but ultimately reductive. forms would have had to wait ages for a hearing in the
In fact, the younger painters were little involved in Establishment atmosphere of the old days. Bernard
imitation of Abstract Expressionism, first or second Cohen's recent paintings involving minimal images sited
generation. Certain elements of attitude on the part of the at the periphery of the pictorial field (and, by implication,
Americans rather than their direct practice was what of the visual field) develop surprisingly but reasonably
counted. They stood for liberty and showed art to be from his work a year or two back; it took determination
the world of possibility; they showed that risk might pay to push the matter as far as this. In short, British pain-
off. ting, always personal and in the possession of personali-
A similar point was to be made a few years later when ties, is now also more individual. It is no more concerned
American Pop Art was widely seen in London. There with 'the problems of painting' than it ever was; the
was not so much imitation—Pop, being quasi-narrative, what's-next-in-art-history approach is a French and
is a British thing anyway—as an appreciation of American American obsession; the British nevertheless are more
capacity for underplaying the idiom—in short, an authen- conscious, and rightly so, of being of some weight in the
tic sympathy. international scene. The 'Little England' point of view is
The Brussels exhibition, 'Young British Painters', like gone, along with 'Me Too.'
recent Venice Biennales, will underscore differences be- Yet it's as well to remember that the visual arts are only a
tween painting here and on the Continent. Now it is small part of British culture and subject to the subtle
Europe that continues to be involved with School-of- dictation of interests, values, and habits of mind almost
Paris attitudes academized and with a Surrealism that has too old to know. Perhaps no young British painter today
passed from eloquence into glibness. There is not a bit could bring himself to make the sort of statement Paul
of this to be seen in the work of the twelve artists repre- Nash made in 1934, but British romanticism goes on. It
sented. lays little emphasis upon pictorial structure as the point
Where connections with Europe are affirmed, they are of painting, much upon content (as if the canvas were a
viable—for instance, in Bridget Riley's interest in Ingres theatre where the painting takes place). More often than
and in Bonnard's and Seurat's space. Peter Phillips' not, it is concerned with effect or with a quality. This
plastic organization of mass images has an energy, a comment is obvious in the case of Blake or Jones or
sense of motility, closer to German and Italian pop (with Hockney, less so perhaps with Tilson (where the rigid
its Futuristic antecedents) than to deadpan American or form of the ziggurat is variously denied, modified, or
British models. enhanced by the way it is painted) or with Hoyland
American influence comes in a number of ways: in the (where a kind of looming space tends to override every
discreet use of paint, for example, in the supression of other sensation, being sometimes incidental to the way
paint quality (except in the work of Peter Blake where the paint is used; not optically controlled).
paint quality is part of the narrative of nostalgia, a Storytelling is strong in this exhibition, as are figuration
crucial term in the vocabulary of feeling. In Blake, and representation —also in search of quality. Linear design
paint quality is often imitated) ; in its apparently im- is strong and colour relatively weak (I wish Peter Sedgley
personal application (Patrick Caulfield, Harold Cohen, had been included to state the case for colour as the
Bridget Riley, Allen Jones, Joe Tilson) ; in symmetry building block) ; of course, there is decorative colour, and
or frontality (Harold Cohen, Robyn Denny, Richard colour used effectively in demonstrations relating to rigid
Smith, Joe Tilson) ; in flatness or quite shallow pic- form, and the 'experienced' colour of Harold Cohen,
torial space (Bernard Cohen, Harold Cohen, Robyn and in a quite different direction of Bernard Cohen. The
Denny, Peter Blake, Bridget Riley, David Hockney) ; in flat colour of Patrick Caulfield offers yet another sort of
essentialized or radically simplified imagery (Patrick interest.
Caulfield, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Harold Cohen, The twelve painters showing in Brussels are a good index
Bernard Cohen, Robyn Denny, Richard Smith, Joe of current preoccupations. The post-war generation is
Tilson) ; in emphasis upon form (Patrick Caulfield, asserting a degree of independence within the broad
Bridget Riley, Richard Smith, Joe Tilson). These are just spectrum of what might be thought of as characteristic-
a few points of contact. Another would be the over-allness ally British interests. At the same time, it is connected
of Harold Cohen's latest work, where the paintings are with the international scene in a healthy way. To practical
intended to have unitary impact. intents, its dialogue begins where influence ends. q
I don't want to labour the issue. Familiarity with avant-
garde American art has given young British painters of the
post-war generation a somewhat more rigorous view of the
art of painting than has been common here among estab-
lished artists in this century. They are certainly less
derivative and imitative than earlier generations. Ameri-
can influence, where it has reached them, has been special
and personal, relevant to individual sensibility, not just a
good idea to try; or else it has been on the level of
attitude, requiring a seriousness and professionalism often
absent from the arts in Britain. It has given dignity to
experiment and made attempting the difficult seem worth