Page 48 - Studio International - December 1968

London commentaries

F. E. McWilliam at the Waddington
Galleries until November 23; David
Annesley at the Waddington Galleries
November 26—December 21.
F. E. McWilliam has returned from the Greek
islands with much matter in hand; thousands of
luminous glass fragments, tesselae subsequently
worked into towers, idols, fetishes, hermetic obser-
vations, all at the WADDINGTON GALLERY. The idiom
is modern, the impulse ancient, a syncratic image
fused in the imagination. One thinks of the Hel-
lenic age; Isis, Alexander, Zarathustra conjoined
along the trade routes, and Gnostics, Christians and
Cabalists colliding in strange conjunction to pro-
duce oddly shaped monuments of belief. They had
too many spirits in those days, we too few, but one
urge was common to both periods, as to this exhi-
bition--a visceral yearning for magic and mytho-
logy.
In practice, the unspoken sign is one cardinal
point and the sculptural presence is another. So
that one can make a net division in the show based
upon size alone, the very small maquettes of several
inches and the larger structures of several feet.
Paradoxically, the small objects are by far the more
monumental. Where sheer size diminishes, propor-
tions become magnified, the sign doubles as altar,
the altar as tower. The imagination is released, and
in part because each of the lambent fragments func-
tions in the maquette as an integral or architectural
mass rather than as decorative or even hypnotic
surface. It is interesting that two of the small
structures, leafed in gold, happen to be — from an
exterior point of view alone—almost identical with
some of Vasarely's recent 'multiples', though as to
the interior consequence not at all. The Vasarelys
in their hard-edged, even Hungarian, precisions
are devotedly material whereas the McWilliams
with their spontaneous vibrations are wholly
spiritual. And yet, the formal scheme is nearly the
same.
A bit larger, McWilliam's Black bean still comes
within the magic circle, a swelling mass at the
point of explosion, rather a cosmic form restrained
than a bean expatiated. All to the good. Where-
upon, as the dimensions increase, the colour factor
comes into play. Another 'bean', golden this time,
and exploded, becomes rather the dome of San
Marco blown open and bearing on its undersides
the blue of the Mediterranean, and a great cocoon-
cum-Venus holds up handsomely in its gold-leafed,
Byzantine formality. Whereas the multi-coloured
totems lose articulation. Blue no longer promises
the airborne deity, green no longer bears the pace is total. Annesley has fashioned pure minimal eminence of shape without metaphor. He occupies,
cthonic voice, and in their present symbolic de- forms, circular ones inscribed within rippled tri- or rather divides, space succinctly, in trim homage
valuation these colours detract from their arch angular ones inscribed again within the circle, and to a partially geometric theme, without psycholo-
purpose when deployed along great surfaces. Still, variations upon the same contrast and counter- gical echo and dedicated to an age that recognizes
were these pieces truly immense, many feet larger, point. Seen head on, these immense assemblages no demon, daemon nor divinity.
they might again enter an area of proportions more become great line drawings in iron; seen from Paul Waldo Schwartz
congenial to them. In the middle way the voice aside, they become precise punnings of thickness
falters. Aristotle may have been wrong about the and thinness, weight and weightlessness, the sche-
perfect mean, then, and how strongly the Hellenic matic shadow of the turbine or the jet engine in
mystics suspected as much. pale successions of colour. This is the very antithesis
The iron sculpture of David Annesley follows of what McWilliam has done. Annesley's statement above F. E. McWilliam Three square 1968
McWilliam at the Waddington. The change of is unique to its moment and assumes the pre- 80 in. high, mosaic