Page 51 - Studio International - April 1971

for the shape. All the same, there is ambiguity at with the paintings of painters in New York, but John Walker
Pershore 1970
every turn. It is not surprising that there have they in turn were stirred by the paintings of the Acrylic on canvas
been many remarks about the almost surrealist painters in Europe. All the same, when Walker 96 X 240 in.
vision that shapes these shapes. What they are first saw the work of the New York school (so- Courtesy Reese Palley, New York and Nigel
and where they rest remain elusive data, and yet called) at the Tate, he found that `the best of that Greenwood, London
they are insistently reminiscent, insistently period had a huge spiritual content' which he 2 John Walker
Remembrance 1971
suggestive. Incongruity is the heart of the could only compare with the old masters. The Acrylic on canvas
matter. They are disposed along the very spiritual content of Pollock's Number Twelve too x 240 in.
bottom of the painting, or they are levitated on a especially still excites him (but not to verbal Courtesy Reese Palley, New York and Nigel
Greenwood, London
shelf-like plane, or they are splayed and pushed definitions), and he admits to wanting to come 3 John Walker
to the very edges of the canvas, but they are to New York in order to test his reactions. In Untitled 1971
always teasing the eye and the memory (even New York, he is a painter among painters, Acrylic on canvas
96 X 240 in.
the doubling, the mirror suggestion brings neither English nor New York School. And he
Courtesy Reese Palley, New York and Nigel
surrealist associations). If there are cascades of is an anomaly since he is able to live the New Greenwood, London
encrusted colour above them, or if there is a York myth more freely than most New Yorkers.
serene dappled skyline ambience around them, That myth, which sustained the abstract
those shapes are still discrete, the very touch- expressionist generation, is based on the belief
stones of the painting. that a painting is the summum of a man's
Walker has been painting for a year in a emotional experience. Walker, who like many
typical cavernous downtown New York loft, good painters is not given to discourse about his
and his paintings are commensurately vast. But work, can speak enthusiastically about the
there is nothing in them to suggest that they `passionate' nature of those American prototypes
might not have evolved that way at any time in in the postwar bohemian tradition. When he was
any place, for they clearly grow out of an working, 'painting very hard for five years'
intense and progressive experience in the realm toward his own abstract vision, he had three
of pure painting. Each canvas carries some photographs in his studio. There was one of
formal suggestion from the last, and each is Pollock, surrounded by his works on the floor,
inspired by a different emotion or mood. In this one of David Smith's studio carpeted with
Walker flies in the face of much recent doctrine drawings, and one of Matisse's bedroom with
which posits a value in serial development. But his cutouts flooding the room. It was for 'the
just as Walker rejects what he refers to as all- way they embraced art' that Walker admired
over painting, so he rejects stylistic uniformity. them. His own ability to embrace art, to live
The shape, he says, must be able to let him only through and with his experiences with
identify with things; it has to have integrity; it paint and canvas, is evident in the new work
has to have specificness; it has to be 'so personal which is marked by singular freedom. Anyone
that I can attach things to it'. It is, in fact, so looking long and closely at Walker's new
personal that it belongs neither to his New York paintings would have to acknowledge that he is
epoch nor to his previous English experience, free of the inhibitions that have given us so
but to modern painting itself. many impoverished stylistic variations during
Walker's ambition was stirred by encounters the past decade. In America (and because of