Page 59 - Studio International - May 1969

1.11.68
acrylic on canvas
78 x 144 in.
2
23.1.69
acrylic on canvas
84x 36 in.
3
25.1.69
acrylic on canvas
84 x 36 in.
4
20.5.68
acrylic on canvas
78 x 144 in.
Waddington Galleries, London

the American painters without compromising vas, balancing several blocks of colour and factors which condition the placing and de-
his own identity. abutting them one with another or relating ployment of thicker colour areas at the next
The question of identity for the majority of strong horizontals across the surface. Late in stage. Decisions about colour are then nec-
abstract painters now hinges on the use of 1966 he began to use thicker paint in some essarily taken in the context of colour and
colour, the most immediately expressive works and to concentrate upon the placing of about texture in the context of an already
quality in abstract painting. In the catalogue two or three large rectangular forms, usually textured surface. A comparatively random
of his retrospective exhibition at the White- in the lower half or two-thirds of a horizontal process thus largely establishes the conditions
chapel Art Gallery in 1967 Hoyland was canvas. (The first of these block paintings, within which a very precise and considered
quoted by Bryan Robertson: `. . . Where to with orange and red juxtaposed on a green formal balance is to be achieved. The juxta-
put colour is the crucial decision, and always ground, was dated 14. 10. 66.) Recently posing of colours on the surface becomes more
the problem. Recently, it has been used ad- Hoyland has been using heavy impasto over uniquely a matter of the properties which the
jacently, as in the striped canvases of Louis; or stained grounds. The painting process is painter can ascribe to them in that context,
the concentric circles or Vs of Noland; or con- separated into at least two distinct phases, and the relationship of coloured form with
centric rectangles as in Albers or Kelly—but characterized by different kinds of physical coloured form generates a space which is at
making one limited volume from two or three involvement with the canvas and different best uniquely painterly and highly specific.
adjacent areas of colour. This became an speeds of execution. What has been done at This is how abstract art has become more
excessive search for making one thing out of the first stage is the foundation for what is meaningful; the effective significance of a
several components, and a trap because some done at the second, although it still leaves the choice within a context depends upon the
artists were tied to those components. Making coloured surface free and available over any extent to which the factors conditioning the
a space work in one way only, meant that area for the disposition of more solid colour choice are wholly restricted to or represented
nothing could destroy an overall surface ten- and form. in that context.3
sion. In the works of the last twelve or fifteen Some preconceptions of the desired final
`The idea of unity-in-division exercised me, as months the canvas is first stained all over with image usually condition the initial stage to a
with Riley or Newman, but it was impossible a coat of strongly diluted acrylic. This has certain extent; for example in a painting like
to put in a shape. And if you have a rectangle then to be left to dry out. These washes of 25. 2. 69 texture and incident are intensified
it is interesting to add to it, to enrich and com- colour (all-over grey or copper-brown in at the first stage over an area which is un-
plicate the area by giving an independent works of mid-1968 and progressively brighter likely to be covered at the second—in this
life to shapes inside it and not to allow them to and more variegated in more recent works) instance the upper area where the bright
be endlessly restricted by their unification serve both to render the canvas itself spatially flecks and streaks of pigment provide some
with the over-all picture plane. In trying to do neutral and to deprive the colours laid upon balance for the strong colours superimposed in
this, it is possible to get both actions at once: it of the illusion of transparency. The gradua- the lower part of the painting.
a separate existence inside a totality.' tion of stained colour, the contours of flow These touches of bright colour also serve to
In his work of 1965-6 Hoyland painted with and, in works like the 20ft-long 28. 2. 69, the particularize the stained areas and to control
heavily diluted acrylics stained into the can- smudges of unmixed acrylic sediment become any unspecified illusions of vacant space which