Page 50 - Studio International - March 1968

That being so, why not make Liberal Studies what tween style and cliche); and, a quixotic extrava- drawings, I could not relate the scribbles, hatch-
they sound like ? Why not admit that art schools are gance this since the cat would destroy it in five ings and erasings to the final images, which always
beginning to fulfil a function which is relevant to a minutes, It's all over my friend, J. King's brightly seemed passive, relaxed to the point of flaccidity,
wider definition of Art than the purely visual one? coloured floor-painting in zigzags of coloured saw- and banal. There is something astonishing about
Not art schools but arts schools. Roger McGough dust; and several others. the achievement, through so violent, involved and
as head of the poetry department at the Royal messy a drawing process, of so literal a view of the
College of Arts? Why not? Certainly a more useful One of the tendencies not represented at the human figure; something mock-heroic about the
appointment than that Chair for Grand Old Young Contemporaries, surprisingly considering monumental waste of paint. The familiarity of the
Hippies at Oxford. the preponderance of Slade students on the organ- style and of the subject matter-endless grubby
Of course if there was any risk of this leading to izing committee and a blessed relief as far as I'm drawings and eternal dreary paintings called The
painting and sculpture becoming more literary and concerned, was the heavy impasto of the post- life room, for which William Coldstream's painting
less visual it would be disastrous. But I don't think Bomberg painters. This style got a good airing (if in the Tate is a prototype- these factors blind one
that would happen. For me, one of the lessons of that's the right word for something so claustro- to the virtues which the works may really have.
the Young Contemporaries exhibition this year phobic in mood) at the SOUTH LONDON ART The battle has moved on; the crucial questions
was a reaffirmation of the primacy of painting and GALLERY, where four young artists were exhibiting about colour and form and paint are being fought
sculpture. That is to say the works which stood in February. David Carr, Alan Howling, Michael over on other, less muddy battlefields. But I'm
out, in a context where it is hard for any work to Knowles, and Philip White met at the Slade sure these four painters would hotly defend the
assert itself, were paintings and sculptures. during the period 1962-6. All are in their twenties literalness of their art, and there is indeed evidence
I don't think the awarding of prizes helps the and all follow, through the plough as it were, in of very acute vision in one or two of the works
overall problems of exhibitions like these, but if I the footsteps of Bomberg, Auerbach, etc. It is the shown. Michael Knowles' Garden-summer evening
had money to spend on the acquisition of artworks paradoxical character of this genre that although of 1967 sorts itself out, if you can get far enough
for myself there would be many things from the the working process is expressive in the extreme, back (about twenty-five yards, I found) into a
Young Contemporaries that I'd be glad to own: individual style, buried under successive layers of splendid blaze of yellow light and green shadow,
one of T. G. Mills' large, thoughtful and poetic paint, becomes eventually indistinguishable. Born- and in Alan Howling's Landscape of 1966 pieces of
paintings; Yvonne Francis' white dots on a cream berg himself (true Slade to the end) stressed the wood pressed into the paint are revealed trans-
ground (if I had the light to hang it in) ; Bill value of form and achieved it, at his rare best, formed as factory buildings in the middle distance.
West's Two Rabbits (a painting of two swans; for through a marvellously expressive colour and David Carr was President of the Young Contem-
the nursery perhaps, to teach the difference be- rhythm. In this exhibition, even in the several life poraries in 1965, which indicates the rate of change.

Views of the Young Contemporaries 1968
at the Royal Institute Galleries.

Above left, Sculpture by Andrew Dutkewych,
paintings by Alex
Thompson (right) and Chris Jones (left)
Above Swivel at will by M. Hamilton

Left, General view with sculpture by J. King (near
right, C. Cofone (far right), Ken Newlan (centre
back) and Gordon Richardson (left)