Page 75 - Studio International - April 1968

London commentary

Andy Warhol at the Rowan; Kenneth
Price at Kasmin; Michael Bolus at
Waddington; Derek Boshier at Robert
Fraser.
One has had to reserve judgement about Andy and/or communications media, its obviousness still fascinatingly independent and self-expressive,
Warhol on the evidence of any of his work so far sometimes gets obscured in practice). This show, with occasional 'happy accidents' like the con-
seen in London. There has been a legend to go on, for me, puts Warhol above Lichtenstein within figuration in No. 3, which looks like a gestural
a glimpse of meaninglessly abbreviated films, and that particular area where they pose almost rendering of Ellis B's 5 o'clock shadow. But from
the occasional not very impressive painting or a identical questions. Warhol's photographs are just an inch or two further away, it's a photograph
few silkscreens in mixed exhibitions. The legend more central than are Lichtenstein's strip cartoons again : the scale makes it almost impossibly diffi-
itself has been confusing—the anecdotes by them- to the whole business of aesthetically representing cult to find an optimum distance for keeping the
selves don't carry much weight in the re-telling predigested images, and they are less-circuitous two readings simultaneous. Ambiguities numbers
(dandified Dada gestures at best, with a gilded about it without losing any of the double-takes three to infinity are supplied by the subject matter
playboy element), but people not given to being involved. They cut out the obsession with style, —the eternal mysteries of identity, character and
overly impressionable about the present New York and with it the possible slither into stylishness, and the human face. Given the information that these
scene keep coming back from New York seriously they concentrate on relationships between reality are the faces of convicted, or at least wanted,
impressed by this aspect of it. and art rather than between art and art. criminals, the permutations of speculation about
The ROWAN GALLERY'S exhibition, consisting of The Most Wanted Men series consists of black and them are endless. To note only one train of en-
twelve silkscreened paintings from The Most white blow-ups in oil paint of identification photo- quiry—the profiles are blandly, expressionlessly
Wanted Men series, and the 1967 set of ten Marilyn graphs from police files. Mostly they are of the commonplace: the full-face aspects incriminating-
Monroe prints, helps to put the record straight, at paired profile-and-full-face variety; occasionally ly exceptional.
least about the pictures. Primarily it repeats the they are just ominously available but unposed The recent set of Marilyn Monroe prints gives an
lesson of the Tate's Lichtenstein show: the state- snapshots of men whom the criminal-record system equally rich sense of meaning at several levels,
ment of scale, physically confronted, is absolutely has not yet been able to card-index in its own aesthetic and human. The legendary face becomes
fundamental. inimitable way. To start from the aesthetic end, phantasmic under the onslaught of optical colour-
Reproduction of these paintings, or reports about Warhol pitches his scale brilliantly between Lich- changes and seems to materialize and de-material-
them (which make them sound like one of those tenstein's jumbo-size (which makes the aesthetic ize as the offprinting gets more exaggerated. Again,
ideas that anyone could carry out once the idea intention unmistakable) and the possible size Warhol opens up endless speculation about identity
had been described) eradicate the point of them of actual photographic enlargement. Ambiguity and reality (there is that story of when he was
even more drastically than in Lichtenstein's case. number one. This creates ambiguity number invited on a lecture tour and for the first two or
Discussion cannot start at second-hand (that may two, which is the optical registration of the image. three engagements successfully palmed off a sub-
sound a truism, but when the subject is Pop art At a certain distance, the marks on the surface are stitute on his audiences). Both in its technical