Page 43 - Studio International - September 1968

appeared with a hollow centre, its basic shape expressed in band or below Reach 1966-7
strip form, and soon afterwards a small curved section was removed chalk, acrylic on canvas 92 x 162 in.
from its top left corner, enhancing the illusion that the shape was a bottom Blackwell 1967
three-dimensional object, with its left side visible as well as its front. acrylic on canvas 105 x 204 in.
The suggestion of the occupation of space which this and the see-
through form produced were intensified when early in 1968 one
(see-through) trapezium was made to overlap another (solid) ;
hitherto trapeziums had always been seen whole. This overlapping
is both profoundly dramatic and, through the crisp sharpness and
simplicity of the shapes in the encounter, elementary and self-evi-
dent. The enforced focusing with strange intensity on one pictorial
incident, almost as if it had nothing to do with the rest of the picture,
actually activates the relatively uninflected remainder of the picture
for which a first glance would suggest a background role only.
A fresh element which appeared late in 1967, always rising directly
from the bottom edge of the picture, was the diagonal cross. Not so
susceptible to simultaneous contradictory three-dimensional inter-
pretations as the trapezium (the hollow trapezium appears both as an
upright form and as the horizontal rim of a well or shaft), it pushes
to the extreme limit so far the insistent self-assertion of a contained
component shape. Usually made of a teeming density of sprayed
paint particles, it stands out tangible and concrete against a more
general ground, its limits (like those of the thickly-sprayed latest
trapeziums) being raised visibly in slight relief. In its similarity to
one of the shapes in Phillip King's Declaration 1961, it is another re-
minder of the oblique and undeliberate links between Walker's
painting and current sculpture, as are the recurrent negative images
he makes of the same sort of wire mesh that Anthony Caro recently
introduced into his work. These points would be almost too contrived
to mention if the forms and textures in question did not rest and hang
in Walker's paintings in a space unusually sensitive to distance, weight
and the affirmation and negation of volume. Where Walker's work
does have a direct connection with current sculpture—as in Reach
1967, which reflects excitement about Phillip King's Through 1966—
the links are less accessible to visual analysis (close though colour
relationships and downward spread are in these two works). But his tures. Occasionally Walker will present a clear-cut form high up in
interest in making difficult the process of actually seeing and locat- a painting and will then improbably place next to it a few seem-
ing the elements in a painting has led recently to his using detached ingly gratuitous solid blotches of paint deposit in several colours.
three-dimensional forms—of perforated metal and even of brick— These too have the vivid presence of something that looks as if it is
placed at various points just in front of the canvas. Essentially these not meant to be there. Yet they strengthen the painting's tension and
act not sculpturally, but as devices extending the already central role add, in terms of what it contains as well as of how it contains it (i.e.
of impediment, concealment and ambiguity noticeable in his work dispersedly), the problem for the spectator of accommodating
from the 'envelope' images of 1965 through a developing interest in widely separated elements into a single complex experience. Their
the effects of the superimposition of opaque forms, to the overlapping blatancy aids this. The experience develops openly from one painting
of trapeziums, in which the complications of the close-up obstacle to the next because rather than merely use a language he has al-
are directly posed. In the most recent paintings (summer 1968) the ready evolved, Walker seeks to justify it, keep it live and extend it,
ground is again black but deliberately related here to contrasting by regularly contradicting any assumptions to which it seems to lead.
`tender' colours, creamy yellows and pinks which float on top of it,
appearing alternately one substance with it and free and detached.
Recently Walker has shown an increasing tendency to introduce
passages so obtrusive and at first glance incongruous that they make
1 'Anthony Caro interviewed by Andrew Forge', Studio International, Vol.
it difficult in yet another way (as canvas size and proportions, grids, CLXXI No. 873, Jan. 1966, p. 7.
and emphasis on simple facts had already done) to come to terms 2 'Questions to the Artists' put by Jasia Reichardt in the catalogue of the
with an individual work and experience it freely. These passages exhibition Essays in Narrative, Zwemmer Gallery, Feb.—Apr. 1966.
usually consist of rectangles of ostentatiously thick and handled 3 Walker's colour is the perfect subject for the critical approach to colour
impasto, itself sometimes strangely sprayed over through mesh. recently advocated by Max Kozloff (`Venetian Art and Florentine Criticism',
Where positioned away from the bottom edge, they appear impos- Artforum, Vol. VI No. 4, Dec. 1967)—`Taste has so changed that it is per-
missible to inject extreme prettiness into colour.... Recent colour develop-
sibly suspended, and recklessly unrelated. At other times, they
ments in painting stress cross-breeding and re-packaging of chromatic
intrude a thin rectilinear probe from one corner along the painting's possibilities... Criticism can strive to "fix" colour all the more effectively
upper edge, presenting an abrupt yet impassive change of plane and by a figurative realization of its smell, sound, taste and touch....'
compelling an adjustment of focus. The grounds, the grids, the
trapeziums and crosses, and these constructively illogical passages, Works by John Walker are included in the exhibition 'European Paintings of
Today' at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, from September 27 through
are all superimposed on the canvas, but among themselves they set
November, and at the Jewish Museum, New York, from January 2 until March
up a play among different levels of superimposition that (even 16. His work can also be seen at Prospekt 68 at the Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, from
before their effects as illusion) is one of the subjects of these pic- September 20-29.