Page 50 - Studio International - July August 1968

romantic yearnings, but from the determination to use himself speaking to Alloway, Feeley opted for an art 'that has presence but
entirely. Like David Smith, he realized that art came from every- isn't unduly urgent, doesn't push itself, but brings you to it rather
thing the artist is—that everything is usable. I am thinking now of the than projects itself upon you.'' This drag or tug is what his paintings
Feeley of 1954, when he'd come to accept his isolation from the came to have. They invite us to enter sympathetically into their
scene; turning away from the then-dominant mode of expressionism patterns of order, but are not insistent. They are in part systematic
must have looked like turning one's back upon the possibility of expressions, and part of their systems are evident, but they withhold
worldly success. something; they are not authoritarian works.
It was his intellectuality that makes important the second element I In this sense, they are classical in spirit. Their order liberates; it
want to dwell upon in his long statement to Alloway. Feeley had a does not imprison. Feeley said, 'I think Greek art and thought share
sense of history—not simply a sense of art history, but of history as a a certain wariness of unduly explicit strategies about life, of not using
whole. He understood that art was both an intensely individual mat- too precise tactics, as though that were all getting a touch super-
ter and a conservative manifestation of general culture. One did not human and not sufficiently allowing man to be at the mercy of forces
need to bring moral issues to art; they existed there already. Feeley that he can't just put at his beck and call.'8
wrote, 'Any assumption about art is an assumption about life.'6 He The balance is crucial—to have order short of dogma, freedom short
was prepared to see his intentions in the most fundamental way and of chaos. Centredness, symmetry, repetitiveness, pattern, stillness,
to find his affinities in the past if they were not to be found in the harmony are not necessarily ends in themselves artistically; they
present. speak to the human situation. Referring to his shift away from
His remark concerning the pyramids and Egyptian sculpture led expressionism, Feeley said, 'It is as though I were required, in order
him to consider the Mediterranean world and the quality of its to keep from going insane, to find something which would give me a
embracing societies. I don't mean that he launched a profound study. core and allow me to dwell on something which could keep me going.
He was looking to the principles and viewpoints behind the forms I began to dwell on pyramids and things like that instead of on
that had moved him. It was not only a library and museum pursuit. jungles of movement and action.'9 Art has an ancient function of
In 1956-7, he lived in southern Spain; in 1961, he travelled in North reconciliation through its images and understanding of forms; this
Africa, Spain, and Italy and lived some months in Greece; in 1966, Feeley saw—a classical insight.
he travelled again in the Mediterranean, briefly visiting Sicily and I don't mean to suggest that he was remote from contemporary life
Greece and touring Italy extensively; he travelled through southern or unconcerned with modernist issues in painting. Quite the reverse.
France and was living once more in southern Spain, near Malaga, It is simply that he found solutions in line with the dictates of his
when he became fatally ill. In short, after 1954, he headed for the temperament and related to fundamental positions in art. Taken in
Mediterranean whenever a teacher's sabbatical or leave allowed it. terms of the scene, his contribution was revolutionary. His invented
The involvement was pervasive and complex. We can see Mediter- forms offered a unique resolution of the figure-ground problem, a
ranean light in Feeley's use of colour, in the resonant primaries and stillness absolutely in accord with his expressive aims. He was among
complementaries and in the attenuated delicate tints he so often the first of the conceptualizers and brought a constructional element
favoured in later years, tints like colours faded by the strong sun (see, to his painting without introducing a comparable rigidity; in fact,
for instance, Altair 1964). And the choice of colour, while personal, can as his work matured, he opened the rectangle more and more, even
be thought of as Mediterranean in relationship, the sandy earth and as he complicated his formal statement. He managed to make a colour
blue (Brutus 1960), the rusty red and watery green (Constantina 1960), art out ofthe most limited palette; colour and form were made to work
and even the tissue-like lavender and muted, powdery orange (Formal together to achieve within their straightforward combinations a rich
haut 1965). expressive variety. His use of a neutral space of bare canvas gave him
Feeley drew and painted from nature; he saw no incompatibility absolute control over the colour plane and area; his work of recent
in this practice. The material, anyway, was transformed, essentialized years is without colour mixture—a pristine matter of hue.
both as to form and colour. His Greek watercolours, for instance, are Most remarkable of all is his development of a vocabulary of adap-
sheer pattern while preserving the quality of place and its relevant ted or invented forms related to the pictorial rectangle. A number
hues. Often, he would paint stones on the beach, shape and colour that come into prominence are already to be found in Untitled (blue
coming together precisely to give the sense of form—yet form held to on blue) 1956—Feeley's dentilated square, his baluster and pendule
flatness. There are always several of these stones to a sheet, their are here phrased explicitly but distinctly. Two of these forms are
illusoriness and reality played upon by their placement. They are capable of sharing a single contour on two edges (or on their axes in
stones—form calls to form, contour to contour—yet they are patterns a spatial projection). The convexities of Feeley's well-known baluster
of transparent colour, too, making a rhythmic interchange through shape make the concavities of the dentil. These shapes have their
differing shape and hue. formal coefficients both within and outside of themselves. In effect,
Feeley responded to Moorish and North African decoration and to they are modules and are infinitely extensible. Some of Feeley's
the decorative element in Mediterranean architecture of ancient sculptures are these invented forms lifted off the surface and into the
times because they do not prejudice a proper understanding of the air. Flat imagery in the paintings, these forms give the same impres-
reality of form. In these traditions, form is renewed and clarified by sion of stilled or contained movement when projected as sculptures.
the ornamental function to which it is put. Nothing is lost; another They project the same spacious order, an internal vitality free of the
dimension is given. Form is never dissolved in ornament, as, for sense of mass.
example, it so often is in Northern Gothic. At best, the North African This artist died at what seemed the beginning of a new develop-
rug or tile, or the decorated capital of the Greek column, will hold ment. His late notebooks are full of projects for sculpture, ideas for
its form in a tension between structure and ornament. This duality paintings. The late works are monumental, among the most noble.
characterizes many of Feeley's late paintings and lends them an The achievement is secure. n
unusual resonance and affective depth. We sense a rigour and sus-
taining formality underlying the simple, attractive shapes and colours. 1. From a letter to the author, dated February 1, 1968.
It is only gradually that we come to feel the structural power beneath 2. Lawrence Alloway, 'Opinions of Paul Feeley' (interviewed by Lawrence
Alloway), Living Arts 3, London, 1964, p. 30. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid.
the unaggressive presentation. (See Maia 1963 or Alphard 1964.)
5. Feeley was in the habit of sketching not only visual ideas but verbal ones.
In a 1934 notebook of Feeley's, there is a definition, `Drag: tug: 6. Statement on Art Policy for Bennington College, October 1959.
exertion of force to draw something toward one.' Thirty years later, 7. Alloway, Op. cit., p. 30. 8. Ibid. g. Alloway, Op. cit., p. 33.
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