Page 44 - Studio International - June 1970

But there is also an interesting implication of shopping expeditions for colour and of how Fool's Blue, 1970, is to my mind perhaps the
something sawn off, a suggestion that from nice it will be to shop for paper. (The act of most beautiful multi-evocative statement that
being a tent the canvas could have gone on shopping probably plays a part too.) Ameri- Smith has yet produced. As always the basic
out, undulating right past us to become a can painting brought home to him the possi- idea is extremely simple. The paint is a dark
runway for a fast landing, so we should be in bilities of sensuous paint in the mid-fifties, and bluish-grey mixture of acrylic and graphite
the picture. Smith has said 'I paint very large until he started to use acrylic paint in 1964 worked densely but in broad open strokes.
pictures for a feeling of enclosure, to occupy the way pigment was worked was vital. Even The blunt edges of the frontal extension sup-
the total vision.' then he rather enjoyed the process—including porting the curves of the canvas shine dully
Seeing Plum Meridian on the floor, where it the faults, such as the fact that 'you only have with graphite, like metal. The effect against
looked rather like a Phillip King, put Smith one chance', you can only make the paint the white wall is of something seen contre-
in mind of a powerful experience he had been denser and denser. Talking of the early period jour. The wall is the light, the painting with
thinking about when working on Gift Wrap in he said crushingly that Mathieu related to its back to it seems like a shadow, unsolid and
1963. 'I think the quality of the suspended Bratby in the way he was using paint straight yet solid, a gleam of light reflected here and
thing gives emphasis to weight almost by deny- from the tube without its being made to live. there off the surface. The shape resembles the
ing it. There's something unnerving about a Smith felt at one time that he had rather over- inverted shadow of a loggia, but instead of
bulky thing suspended on a wall: it can fall. done the elegant brushwork, but it seems being on the ground it's on the wall. It's not
The first time I had this impression was seeing typical that he has only tried using a spray flat but stepped up at the bottom in a stag-
a John Chamberlain—one of those crashed recently and that he found he could still brush gered, sideways perspective, though all the
car pieces— which was on a wall in an average- quicker and more satisfactorily. However, the struts are parallel at the top. It's neither the
sized room. It was like having the sofa over effect of blurred focus inherent in spraying thing nor the shadow of the thing.
the mantelpiece.' Organized drama plays an did interest him and was used in Riverfall to The whole idea of a painting suspended from
important part in Smith's work, but just as the give the painting a casualness the painter the wall is confirmed, denied, re-examined.
bubble is always waiting to be pricked by values. Amazon is like a companion piece, Darkness dissolves form as much as light. The
visual suspension or funning title, in many muddy swirls of opacity contrasting with its vertical struts are so slim that they could
ways he is the essence of the gentle artist, a translucence. almost be pinned directly to the wall like
master of strategy, of the tangible/intangible, Over the last few years the move towards a paper. Smith has been exploring similar ideas
of lightness, of gaiety, of the voluptuous curve more direct confrontation with paint has been for some time. Gazebo he regards as having a
and the crisp fold. In contrast to deprecatory widespread. John Hoyland was perhaps its made-to-measure wall of its own, since the
speech, considered statement, he has a fond- earliest and most vociferous advocate here and inside is flat, though maybe in a sense this is
ness for forceful verbal images : 'the hand and Smith has spoken of late in a remarkably something of an intellectual twister. Quarter
brush as against the power saw' or 'its rela- similar way. 'The thing I find more interesting Past, also done in 1966, simply involves fram-
tionship to the drawings is like a body to an nowadays is paint as a substance, textural ing an area of the wall to suggest a clock face.
X-ray' or 'they do become architectural in qualities, the way paint can be shiny or matte A 1967 painting entitled Sea Wall (a rather
scale rather like some grand facade in a or grainy or smooth. Finding this quality in more crashing pun than usual) is based on
narrow street'. paint again makes for another kind of effort linked folds of paper which allow chinks of
The other kind of canvas-stretching Smith is in work.' He has been experimenting with wall to shine between them. Like Quarter Past
concerned with is used in Clairol Wall and polyurethane paints, epoxy paints, with added it too is a dark painting.
later variants like Malaya, 1969. The idea goes graphite. He went on to say: 'Now I don't The edge of the canvas is of course tradi-
back to cut-and-folded-paper drawings of want the thing to look like canvas, like cotton tionally the point at which the illusion hangs
1966/67, out of which developed drawings duck. I want it to look silken or earthy or in the balance, where it is faded out or upheld
made of layers of paper. In Malaya a corner towel-like. The ability of paint to mutate/ by trompe l'oeil devices. The idea of pushing
of the canvas is tilted forward quite a small modify the appearance of material: this the interest to the edge like crust goes back a
number of degrees and stretched out of line quality is what I think about in the paint good way: Billboard, 1961, based on one sur-
to shape focus accordingly. The surface of the now.' rounded with flashing lights in Times Square
painting is much less disrupted, almost back He has lived a good deal in the country is an example. In Wallflower, 1964, in the
to the straight rectangular canvas. But instead recently, in California and Virginia, summers Sphinx series, the space is almost entirely edge
of the canvas being a featureless battlefield on Cape Cod, and now in Wiltshire. Con- —like Barnett Newman's narrow paintings.
for illusion, its existence is stressed in a sidering the question of whether it might have Smith has painted a band of brick-like stripes
material way. 'The bulk the canvas encom- had an effect on his work he doubted it, but round the rim of the narrow forward plane.
passes, though modest compared to the said 'The paintings are in a uniform module, The figuration floats in front of the wall and
Sphinx paintings or the package paintings of a very regular module. The paint is struc- joins with it at the same time.
'63, has a much more solid presence. The warp tured in a more organic way... In the early Smith now seems to have reached a peak of
in the canvas has more weight.' The point pictures the influence of advertising was in the complexity in stretching canvas. Paintings
seemed underlined when I noticed, pinned "menthol" landscape one was trying to get have an almost organic construction—in
up in Smith's studio, a postcard of Ghiberti's into the pictures. But now I think of painting Amazon and Riverfall it even seems like bone
bronze doors altered on similar principles. as painting and landscape as landscape and and flesh. In his last show at Kasmin's these
Emphasis has come back to the paint too. The they are hardly ever confused.' paintings seemed to be writhing, needing to
origins of the title Malaya are interesting from However, sometimes there is a reference the get out of the pokey space. Later I saw him
this angle, and also a lesson not to seek artist can't escape. Riverfall is a case in point. bolt Fool's Blue together for photography. It
external references in the paintings: 'I met a Talking about the picture Smith said 'The was like a cross between carpentry and sur-
woman in a pub once whose son was in recent show was basically a green show. I gery, especially the resilient softness of the way
Malaya as a prisoner of war, and he did paint- think green is a very difficult colour to use, the canvas peeled back from the stretcher.
ings in boot polish and blood—things like that. but it has tremendous versatility, kind of The human hand is important at all stages.
The painting was so much in those kind of hidden depths. It has in a way unwanted Smith has to feel familiar with his materials
colours that it was a reference in that way. It associations like underwater. If a thing gets and hesitates to adopt new ones, as 'new
wasn't very kind of deep.' that close you can't deny it. You can't sud- materials—because of their novelty— control
Smith has talked of how he used to go on denly call it "Snowscape" or something.' the image'. However, he sees a possible