Page 44 - Studio International - December 1969

necessary to base their development upon a
UK programmatic abstraction from the world of which he has recently edited for Faber and
Faber, he sets up the following schema :
commentary natural appearances to that of 'pure' plasti- modern art --> abstract art --> constructive art.
city. And if Vasarely traces a 'dialectical path'
The essential part of this schema, which is not
from appearances to the 'plastic unity', intended to have very great significance, is
Charles Biederman reaches back beyond the that the arrows move in one direction only,
Modern Movement and re-establishes con- and the various divisions are therefore auto-
ANTHONY HILL AT KASMIN, LONDON, tact with Cezanne's investigation of 'spatial- nomous. It follows that any attempt to relate
14 OCTOBER-8 NOVEMBER; LI YUAN-CHIA AT colour-structure'. But, whether this is a matter Hill's work to that of artists who move freely
LISSON, BELL STREET, LONDON, 16 OCTOBER- of age or of personality, Anthony Hill sees no between the categories, or to read 'abstrac-
29 NOVEMBER; GROUP ONE FOUR—`NATIVITY need to retrace in his own work the antecedent tion' from the world of natural appearances
SOME NEW THOUGHTS ON A HARDY PERENNIAL' and early stages of the constructive movement. into his work, is ultimately pointless.
AT THE WELSH ARTS COUNCIL GALLERY, In an essay entitled 'Programme. Paragram. A similar argument can also be used in
CARDIFF, THROUGH DECEMBER. Structure.', which appears in Data2, the work relation to the debased constructive art that

Anthony Hill's exhibition of recent work at the
KASMIN GALLERY requires to be considered not
simply in terms of the course of his own deve-
lopment up to this point, but also in relation
to the course of constructive art in the last fifty
years, and the ways in which he himself has
contributed to the evolution of constructive
ideas. This is not to claim that his work must
be corroborated with some kind of private
universe before it can be seen in its true
significance. Quite the reverse, the role of
Hill's theoretical writing is to investigate an
area—for example, the notion of structure—
which exists quite irrespective of the plastic
arts. Where the expressionist poet/artist can
often be accused of letting his work depend
upon the 'metalanguage' of a personal
literary code, Hill confronts the general
problem of the reading of structures, and his
concepts are public ones, which can be
applied as much to other artists— Mondrian,
for example¹—as to his own works.
This search for a public and scientifically
based theory is of course a feature which
allies Anthony Hill to other artists within the
constructive tradition, and an indication of
his relationship to this tradition is perhaps the
logical prerequisite to further discussion. It
would be pointless to speculate, however, on
the degree to which his notion of the relief,
for instance, does or does not diverge from
such artists as Tatlin, van Doesburg and
Biederman. If the uniqueness of constructive
art, in being a movement whose development
has continued more or less unbroken for half
a century, lies in its continuity, this is by no
means to be equated with equivalent evolu-
tionary development on the part of each
constructive artist. There are several living
artists, Vasarely for example, who find it

Anthony Hill 1969
Photo: Lewinsky
2
Anthony Hill
Relief Construction H2 1969
Aluminium and vinyl
40 x 40 in.
3
Anthony Hill
8=8 1969
Engraved plastic laminate