Page 53 - Studio International - February 1970

rectangles which float in ambiguously deter- to portray an apparition of crossed lines. tensely graphic life—is represented in some
mined spaces, and are occasionally obscured One of the outstanding works in the exhibi- 150 drawings and sketches. We see the work
by a filmy wash of almost-white. Being more tion was by another 'first', Jake Berthot. His of young Gorky, in the late 1920s and early
experienced painters, both of these artists sensibility runs closer to the Rothko lyricism 1930s, as symbolic of the values of a long
avoid the thinness and emptiness of their than any of the others, and it has led him to painting tradition, and radically different
younger companions. paint a sort of a diptych in which the greenish- from the values of today. It is apparent that
The very young and the young include Gary brown centre is mirrorlike in its depths, and Gorky, like Matisse before him, had a healthy
Bower, who concurrently has a one-man in which the dividing plane is almost invisible. sense of reserve which prevented him from
exhibition at the new O.K. HARRIS GALLERY in The addition of narrow extensions fortifies the declaring himself 'artist' before he had
the new gallery quarter downtown. Like Ban- impression of some kind of iconic intention, mastered certain problems he set for himself.
nard, Bower anchors his lyricism in a kind of and bolsters the quiet impression of depth this As is well known, Gorky spent many years
grid. In Bower's case, it is a grid which nearly monochrome painting conveys. There rehearsing for his last grand performance, and
brings out triangular patterning. Over and are others in the show hovering around the these rehearsals very often took the form of
around this reassuring structuring, the artist edges of the monochrome image, the best of exhaustive drawing.
feels free to let his imagination loose, and also them being Brice Marden whose triptych of Gorky drew from necessity, and he drew on
his brush. The results vary, but are almost densely painted, neutral canvases that range history. The immediate history he attacked
always inconclusive. At his best, Bower sug- from putty colour to flagstone grey, is a hard in a scholarly way was the history of Picasso's
gests unlikely combinations of abstract geo- painting to like, but yet clearly bespeaks the feints in and out of Cubism. Among the early
metric form with the sheer sensuous pleasure seriousness of its author. works here are several clearly Picasso-
of undefined washes of thin colour. He has Other 'trends' in the Whitney include a kind inspired drawings, in which Gorky experi-
picked up an old de Kooning-via-Rauschen- of folk surrealism, in which artists seem to ments with the fragmentation of form, and in
berg mannerism— the thin spray of white over translate photographs into dreamy, or per- which he attempts to break the habits of
a form—but is not always precise in the way he haps campy, images. One of these is by John groundline-to-horizon spacing. His initial
applies it. Clem Clarke who mixes September Morn divisions of spaces, like Picasso's of that period,
Another young painter seen for the first time with Poussin and gets the equivalent of a involved shifts in scale and compartmentaliza-
in the Whitney Annual is David Diao whose soupy rock-and-roll lyric. More sophisticated tion, but also, hints of conventional anchoring
experiments with the expansive spaces first folk surrealism is offered by Ed Ruscha whose in horizontal and vertical forms. It was to be a
suggested by certain abstract expressionist
forebears have been consistently interesting,
although never fully articulated. His painting
in this show is a large tannish-ochre canvas
scored here and there with blistered clots of
the same colours, and occasionally scraped to
produce a light underplane. I think Diao is a
serious explorer, and found this painting more
convincing than any of his I've seen.
The interest in amorphous forms, and the kind
of cloudy expansions that once excited the
abstract expressionist generation is present
also in the work of several other young artists,
among them Ronnie Landfield, whose floats
of clouds are supported by a gratuitous flat
bar of colour at the base of the painting
(another visible mannerism employed by
several). Possibly Larry Poons's recent in-
fatuation with crusty painting, cratered in
such a timely moonshot way, and so short of
Dubuffet's intensity, has appealed to a num-
ber of the younger painters. They translate
the pocks, cracks and earth-crust effects into
the thin acrylic dyes, but it is still the same tipped bottle of olives sits in splendid isolation process of some ten years for Gorky to find the
image. on a solidly painted ground, and John means of charting the circular spaces in which
There are far fewer 'hard edge' painters this Baldessari whose enactment of a real folk there was little need for the rigour of straight
year, although the dean of them all, Frank painting (commissioned by him from a folk lines.
Stella, shows an immensely strong half-moon- lady Sunday painter) is a gesture of some Toward 1942-3, Gorky seemed ready to pull
shaped painting, a kind of stunning sunset amusement. I can't say the same for the together the various insights of his long
image, held tight in dayglow colours by its gesture of Joseph Kosuth who, with his usual apprenticeship, and commenced to establish
horizontal tension, and by the thin red, tight bloody earnest fog of quasi-philosophical cant, a cohesive rhetoric. His principal means was
elastic line making his semi-circular forms sit presents a few wall labels. On the whole, line—line which he progressively freed from
very slightly behind the picture plane. though, there are far fewer gimmicks and its delineative functions in terms of isolated
Two younger painters exhibited for the first passing fancies in this Annual than in the past form. Not only does the line flare out into
time at the Whitney are at opposite ends of the few annuals we have seen. spaces that could never be described geo-
hard-edge spectrum. William Williams shows It takes sharp psychological readjustment to metrically, but it also leaves behind colour;
a very large and very harshly bright composi- turn from contemporary works to the exhibi- skirts it; amplifies it; stresses it, and yet, lives
tion, complex in its suggestion of overlapped tion of Arshile Gorky drawings at KNOEDLER'S. its independent life. Once the line is freed, the
planes, and strong in its contrasts, while In this comprehensive exhibition, Gorky's matter of space becomes easier to deal with.
Donald Kaufman prefers very muted neutrals whole life as a draughtsman—his whole in- Clearly, Gorky had a vision of space that was
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