Page 48 - Studio International - January 1970

UK Peter Lloyd Jones
Malasri Ragini 15.11.1968
2
commentary Malwa 1640—from W. G. Archer,
`Central Indian Painting', Plate 9

PETER LLOYD JONES AT DEMARCO, EDINBURGH,
15 JANUARY-14 FEBRUARY; A NOTE ON
MAKONDE SCULPTURE AT GROSVENOR, LONDON,
TILL JANUARY 31; TIM SCOTT AT WADDINGTON
II, LONDON; JOHN MOORES BIENNIAL EXHIBI-
TION, LIVERPOOL, TILL JANUARY 26.

As their collective title, A Sequence of Ragas, shows, Peter Lloyd Jones has found in the mine a precise figurative content, but some
implies, Peter Lloyd Jones's paintings at the Munsell Colour Atlas a notation for his basic kind of figurative story-telling seems in-
DEMARCO GALLERY, Edinburgh, are related palette, which is independent of actual pig- evitable. In Syam Kalyam for example, the
to Indian painting and music. There are ments. large white rectangle which includes the
more Indian modes or ragas than European While these paintings share with Islamic geometrical centre of the painting looks like
modes, because there are at least 22, instead decorative art a certain dissociation of colour the wall of a house. Within it, the yellow
of 12, intervals in the basic scale, and because from shape, the actual shapes used to derive rectangle with it's purple border looks like a
the number of notes selected on the ascent to large extent from European abstraction, lit interior seen through a window frame with
and the descent can vary. Tradition gives while their placement on the canvas has been its complementary shadows. The area to the
precise associations to focus the expressive progressively influenced by the Indian rag- left seems to make a landscape in grey, green,
effect of both individual notes and ragas. malas. This is evident in the development brown, and ochre, and above both house and
According to one tradition, each of 6 princes from Vangali Ragini (cp. Albers) and Bhairavi landscape an uninterrupted blue strip be-
or ragas had 5 princesses or raginis, account- Ragini (cp. Lohse) to Malasri Ragini (cp. comes the sky. Below them, the light grey
ing for 36 of the musical modes. There is a Malwa painting of 1640). rectangle becomes a terrace to contain the
correct time of day for the playing of each The majority of shapes are rectangles or garden plot of the green trapezium. In this,
raga. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth implied rectangles, and a formal method of as in most of the paintings, it is the small com-
centuries first poems and then paintings were construction can be inferred. Often a series of plex which baffles precise interpretation.
made to illustrate the ragas. Peter Lloyd Jones rectangles are placed or nested within each Knowing the origin of these complexes in the
regularly visited the Victoria and Albert other; the nest thus formed may be sliced in Indian paintings of the seventeenth century
Museum in order to study these ragmalas or half, or quartered, so that the outer rectangles often enables me to identify them as couples
garlands of ragas. He derived a precise set of become square U's and L's. In most of the or small groups of figures. In Madhmadhyavi
colour scales from them. The exact imitation paintings one area of the canvas is developed Ragini (Morning) a prizewinner at the Open
of this source of inspiration was undertaken in into a small complex, by juxtaposing different Painting Exhibition (Belfast 1968, Arts
the belief that the trend in twentieth-century cut nests, and placing the combine thus Council of Northern Ireland), the two nests,
painting has been towards fewer colours per formed so that it partially overlaps other split vertically, and displaced relative to each
painting, with consequently less subtle and nested rectangles. A small proportion of the other have some affinity with Rubin's double
complex harmonies, however striking. shapes are trapezia, but I have not space to profile. Madhymadi, lotus-eyed, her golden skin
As formal structures Peter Lloyd Jones's describe their function. smeared with saffron, laughingly embraced by her
paintings share something with Celtic, and The formal method of construction does not husband, kisses and is kissed by him, the sages tell,
more with Islamic decorative art, which he alone determine the pictorial structure; this after her heart's desire.'
previously studied. Spatial structure is sug- depends on just how and where the formal It is more likely that the vital significance of
gested primarily by overlap cues, and the in- elements are nested or cut. Most typically, these complexes will be carried by the image
filling of colour is free to give otherwise a rudimentary picture space seems to emerge, of an altar, especially when, as in Desa Varari
similar or identical abstract shapes specific consisting of planes in one of two possible Ragini, the complex is placed within what
identities, either descriptive, as green for orientations. Horizontal planes may seem to appears to be a building. The rites which
field, or expressive, as gold for something run from under the spectator's feet, or they might be associated with these altar-complexes
sumptuous and rich. Each painting uses a dis- may appear as floors glimpsed through vary with the moods induced by the colours.
tinct palette of up to 16 colours; each palette windows, or as terraces at different heights. The erotic and the mystical seem to be linked
is actually a different selection from a basic The vertical planes all seem to face the by the fact that in making a direct abstraction
palette of about 50 expressively distinct colours— spectator frontally like walls, chests, etc. In from the Ragmala Peter Lloyd Jones has in
to use the epithet applied by Indian aestheti- a way, it is like a tidied up version of the some cases arrived quite close to Tantric
cians to the 22 notes of the basic scale from structure used by de Stael around 1952 (e.g. Art. q
which the ragas were selected. As the pre- Football Players at the Parc des Princes). KENNETH ADAMS
liminary sketch for Syam Kalyam (Dusk) The pictorial structure does not fully deter-