Page 40 - Studio International - September 1968

below Blackwell 1966
collage, acrylic on canvas 92 x 162 in.
Courtesy: Axiom Gallery, London
right No. 1 of series of 5 greens 1967-8
acrylic on canvas 105 x 204 in.
Courtesy: Axiom Gallery, London
bottom right Two 1968
acrylic on canvas 37 x 264 in.

method of colouring already used in 1965 but now distinctive. ing together, is a distinguishing feature of much of the best recent
Fostering the illusion that these shapes were applied to, rather than art (for example in Louis, Oldenburg, Flavin and Tucker, a deliber-
painted on, the canvas, the colour that defined them was sprayed to ately varied selection). The complexity of experience of Walker's
create gently blurred changes of hue within each one. This under- paintings increased noticeably at this point when he was able to use
lined the autonomy of any shape from adjacent areas, suggested the the same elements to emphasise simultaneously uncompromising
fall of light on a three-dimensional object, and sometimes (particu- visual 'thereness' and self-sufficiency, and a very pressing, mysterious
larly in the triangles, where colour was sprayed in a galaxial stippling) and open sense of dialogue among them and of corporate mood.
implied distant space seen through gaps punched in a dominant The quality of neutral existence became inseparable from that of an
ground, gaps paradoxically one with the very forms that were imaginative leap. Each of Walker's paintings now conveyed, in
clearly so solidly superimposed. ways remarkable for painting, a strong sense of place. Their ever-
Late in 1966 Walker adopted the trapezium as his principal canvas increasing dimensions (average size of the early trapezoid paintings
shape and also as the principal depicted shape within his paintings, was 8+ x 14 feet) meant that the spectator confronted a particular
accompanied by the drawn rectilinear grid. His painting entered at system of relationships as a direct encounter in his own space. But
this point its most complex and assured phase, which is still develop- each painting was not only environmental, but a specific environ-
ing. The trapezoid paintings are more than a synthesis of so many of ment. This owed much to the roles of the grid and of the bottom
Walker's earlier departures. Their form makes possible a more edge of the painting.
complicated relationship between the parts and the whole. By its In the 1965 paintings the regular screen of rectangles had forced
pronounced emphasis on downward thrust, each canvas is like a particular images forward and this now markedly recurred with the
solid resting on its natural underside. The self-declaratory character exposed grid. The space between spectator, images and grid now
of the materials used in surprising conjunction (sprayed, stained or seemed extremely shallow and the actuality of the images that much
encrusted paint; pastel), and the mapped-out definition (given by the more pressing. In 1965 the correspondence of the axes of the rect-
grid) of the exact area of the canvas, combine with its positive format angles composing the screen with the canvas shape had engendered a
to assert each painting's character as an object. The interaction definite sense of endless continuity beyond each painting's confines;
between strikingly impassive exposure of self-evident visual facts and now the disagreement between rectilinear grid and canvas shape
operat- 82 the formal complexity and romantic range of the same facts stressed the identity of each and the finite boundaries of the painting