Page 41 - Studio International - March 1968

tures, but where large oblong areas are in question
Southall resorts to a moire-like application of the paint
which, once again, registers a 'jump' or sudden change of
diction. The pictures might fall apart, at this point; if
they don't, it is partly because of the continental scale of
the work. We don't give up looking, once launched, any
more than, when traversing the Nullabor Plain, we
would get out of the car because we disagreed with one
of our companions. The pictures create a complete
world, and we agree to live in them.
If the big new pictures have a subject it is, I think, the
possibility of combining the emaciated forms of the
slightly earlier work with the emotional responses ap-
propriate to a canvas of orthodox shape. Put another
Right Alternate 1967
way, the pictures are about the introduction of such
acrylic on cotton duck
orthodox shapes into the obsessional, narrowed-down
7 x 7 ft.
world of the bandaged planks. When I said initially that
the new paintings are 'the beginning of something' I
Centre El Hacedor 1967-8
acrylic on cotton duck meant that they are not, as some people's big pictures
6 x 32 ft. are, a last ponderous re-casting of material overdue for
the trash-heap. They are the work of someone who is still
Bottom Shade 1967 opening up; and the safe taste of the 1980s may learn to
acrylic on cotton duck
feed upon them.
6 x 18 ft.