Page 50 - Studio International - October 1967

vultures, satanic brothers of the dove missing from narcissistic gesture. Experimental psychosis has Gwyther Irwin-Work in Progress 1957-67
this version of the baptism, perch over scattered become a cult. Gimpel Fils
limbs and tangled loinclothes. On the opposite Brett Whiteley is very much a figurative painter, 5-30 September
wing of the triptych a tarmac road skirts a precipice and one cannot imagine his ever being anything Gwyther Irwin is a sophisticated abstract artist
and winds up over the Umbrian Outback. One else. Distortion and disfigurement occur in the who has not been through a figurative develop-
can understand Brett Whiteley's need to try out present paintings where the excitement or distress ment as a painter. His first works were paintings
the stability and affirmation of a painting he of the original experience require greater expres- on a very large scale made in response to his own
respects, in a situation which appears to offer no siveness than the painter can achieve without them. `reflective experiences' of the Cornish coast land-
possibilities for positive statement. The arts of The most tranquil and representational painting scape in which he grew up. It is instructive to see
cruelty expose our vulnerability to sensations and in the exhibition, the nude study I mentioned at how an artist unconcerned with representation or
experiences for which our politics and our religions the beginning of this article, is also to my mind the with figurative drawing sets out to express parti-
have ceased to make allowance. The artist who best. The experiences involved are those the cular sensations about a particular landscape or to
operates outside politics or religion (and in the painter can handle with assurance and they are recreate particular associations with that land-
present state of affairs often outside the law) takes communicated beautifully. Some of the other scape. Here the method by which these experiences
on at times like these the role of scapegoat, acting paintings pose problems which appear to be un- are transcribed is bound up with the process by
out in public emotions we are ashamed to share. answerable, present cliff-faces in terms both of which the picture takes form. The making of the
Unfortunately this situation does not always pro- feeling and of technique, which I cannot see the picture becomes an episode in the painter's life
duce great art-Goya was a giant but exceptional painter surmounting. I cannot see the images of interacting with the earlier episodes in which the
figure. Scrupulous honesty is necessary if sensa- violence or of divinity painted with the reality visual experiences are enshrined. In 1957 Irwin
tionalism and self-indulgence are to be avoided. and conviction with which Brett Whiteley has began making collages of paper torn from hoard-
In a painting where the integrity of original invested the intimate gaze from that one clear eye. ings. In the last of these there is no process of
experience is upheld above all else, passages of That he hopes to be able to achieve this degree of composition as such; the pictures are worked
mannerism, of stylishness or of simply weak paint- realization in the more disturbing context is per- like a page of writing, line by line and layer
ing tend to become identified with posturing, with haps suggested by the inclusion of the following by layer, each decision made in the light of what
time-serving or with weakness in the painter. The quotation on one wing of the triptych after Piero's has already been decided and each new experience
passages of weak painting in Whiteley's earlier Baptism: dictated by the character that has already begun
work, the swathes of modish but functionless When you make the two one and to emerge. The weathered paper adds textures of
colour in the bathroom series, grated less on the when you make the inner as the outer its own past existence to the interaction already
eye where the whole painting worked on a lower and the outer as the inner and the above taking place. The process of creation once started
emotional key. In the current exhibition features as the below, and when is strangely irrevocable; analogous to the process by
like the specious question-mark in the centre of the you make the male and the female into a which a landscape or a cliff-face settles and is
self-portrait break whatever tension the painting single one, weathered, a process both capricious and irrever-
may have like camp gestures in an operating so that the male will not be male and sible, but always meaningful in relation to our own
theatre. the female not be female, when you make development at any stage or at all stages of life.
And once the spell has been broken one begins to eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand This interpretation is born out by Gwyther Irwin's
question the whole. The baring of the soul is not in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place own words; 'The character, and textural qualities
necessarily an act of complete honesty any more of a foot, and an image in the place of an of rock faces; the moods and rhythms of the sea,
than the baring of the body is necessarily an act of image, are the soul of my work as a painter. I realize this
love. Divestment can in itself become a modish or then shall you enter the Kingdom. now. I spent twenty years watching the changes
wrought by the sea in particular areas of rock.'
(From an interview with Mervyn Levy, Studio
Brett Whiteley Fidgeting with infinity triptych (for International Feb. 1964).
Piero...) 1966-7 The torn-paper collages were accompanied by
oil and mixed media on plywood, 96 x 150 in. works in string on canvas, emotionally evocative
and reminiscent of the patterns of sand and water,
and were followed by reliefs made up of black
cardboard strips which explored different areas of
feeling and thought, more isolated and more
solemn. The recent white reliefs relate to a large
relief in Portland stone which Gwyther Irwin has
just completed for the new B.P. building at Moor-
fields in the Barbican. In these later works the
same range of responses to light and landscape is
transmitted in more crystalline form. The light in
which they are seen enlivens these reliefs as reflec-
tions from water enliven surfaces of rock with
patterns of sun and shadow. This spontaneous and
natural effect is counterbalanced by the evidence
which the works present of the painstaking slow-
ness of their manufacture, the process by which
the artist reveals himself in the light of a remem-
bered experience. 'While making a picture I do
not see an end, but an end of sorts must inevitably
arrive and having arrived I then do not see a
beginning. Maybe one continues because it is the
only way of understanding the continuation, which
is to say, oneself.' (Quoted by Alan Bowness in an
article on Gwyther Irwin's work in Quadrum 1964.)