Page 49 - Studio International - November 1968

doesn't exist in London. Below left Below
Where my own selections—Barry Martin and Keith Vaughan Maurice Cockrill
Basil Beattie—were concerned, I imagine that the Assembly of figures 1 When did you last touch your father?
pre-occupations of a professional critic entered into gouache oil on canvas
things as much as those of a poet. I wanted, for 16½ x 16½ in. A.I.A. Gallery
instance, to show not merely two artists whose work A.I.A. Gallery
I liked, but two relatively unestablished ones who
might benefit from a London showing. There
would have been small point, for instance, in
showing a few minor things by Bridget Riley,
greatly as I admire her recent work.
Another thing I wished to do (and here I was on
the opposite tack to Mr Fuller) was to pick work
which pleased me, but not for its literary connota-
tions. Hence the decision to ask a kinetic artist and
a colour-painter with strong 'minimalist' leanings
to participate. Writing poetry about these choices
seemed to present an intriguing challenge—parti-
cularly as I had resolved to try and write poems
which were 'equivalents' in another medium, rather
than interpretations.
The question the exhibition seems to raise most
strongly is not that of the nature of modern art,
but that of the nature of modern poetry. In a way,
the artists tell the gallery-goer nothing very new. It
is the poet's struggle to come to terms with what the
artists are doing which fascinates.
Edward Lucie-Smith

' "Tout terriblement ... Guillaume Apollinaire" 1880-1918: A Celebration 1968'
at the Institute of Contemporary Arts- until November 27
The ideas of this extraordinary innovator and pro- Important facsimile and original documents,
phet—in the fields of poetry and art—form part of photographs, letters, leaflets, etc, and catalogues
our modern aesthetic consciousness. The ICA cele- containing prefaces by Apollinaire (first exhibitions
bration, organized by Simon Watson Taylor, con- by Derain, Delaunay, Gontcharova/Larionov,
tains many new works inspired by Apollinaire, as Survage/Lagut—with prefaces in the form of
well as historical documentation. The show falls calligrammeṡ, the 1918 Picasso/Matisse exhibition).
into the following areas: Illustrations to Apollinaire's work, including the
Examples of the work of those young painters forty cubist engravings by Marcoussis for Alcoolṡ,
championed by Apollinaire in his 1913 essay 'Les and a selection of other illustrations by Derain,
Peintres Cubistes' and elsewhere—Braque, De- Dufy, Chirico, etc.
launay, Derain, Duchamp, Duchamp-Villon, A modern section showing works specially created
Gleizes, Gris, Herbin, Marie Laurencin, Leger, by painters, poets and film makers in the spirit of
Marcoussis, Metzinger, Picabia, Picasso; Henri Apollinaire : paintings, sculptures, and mixed-
Rousseau, a number of portraits of Apollinaire by media works (constructions, poetry-posters, kinetic
his contemporaries, including Chirico, Delaunay, poem-sculptures, object-poems, word-paintings,
Larionov, Marcoussis, Matisse, Metzinger, Picabia, etc). The sixty artists whose work is on show in-
Three verticals 1968, oil on canvas, 64 x 70 in., and cartoons by Picasso; and a famous portrait by clude : Arroyo, Enrico Baj, Clive Barker, Baruchello,
by Nicholas Georgiadis, in his one-man exhibition a younger admirer, Asger Jorn. Peter Blake, Pol Bury, Patrick Caulfield, Bob
at the New Art Centre—until November 9. This Originals and photocopies of Apollinaire's calli- Cobbing, Jim Dine, Ian Hamilton Finlay, John
painting was reproduced in colour in our October grammes, the figurative poems in handwritten or Furnival, Richard Hamilton, Allen Jones, John
issue, but due to an error of marking on the typographical form, including several manuscripts Latham, Lillian Lijn, Christopher Logue, Edward
progressives was inverted. in Apollinaire's hand never previously exhibited. Lucie-Smith, Stass Paraskos, Patrick Procktor,
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