Page 34 - Studio Internationa - March 1971

Albert Irvin

Andrew Forge

In his latest pictures this passion for colour of a
certain sort, the equivalent so to say of a
composer's passion for certain groupings in the
orchestra, has found an outlet such as it has not
had before.
His perennial problem, I think, has been what
to do with this colour-force, how to give it space.
Some earlier pictures, much smaller, more
opaque and more obviously organized than the
new ones, often suffered from a kind of
overcrowding. The colour, the strongest
element, became feverish and congested. In the
recent pictures he has found ways of releasing it:
it expands, radiates and pulses freely, the life
blood of the picture.
Two factors seem to have been important in
this transition. One is supremely practical. He
has been working for the last two years in a very
large studio. He could paint large and that meant
deploying his colour as a direct, physical fact
with a real extension in space. The other factor
is more speculative. It has to do with a series of
drawings started a few years ago and still in
progress, done with a magic marker or its
equivalent. In these drawings, in which
hatchings of colour are bundled together into
blocks, various characteristics of the dye-based
medium have been important: its transparency,
the way the dye soaks into the paper, the way it
can cross other colours, transforming them yet
not obligerating or degrading them; and its
particular kind of linearity by which colour can
reach a maximum richness without losing the
directional impulse of the line that puts it there.
The recent pictures are as direct as fast
moving drawings. The forms emanate from
gesture, but gesture characterized by paint
thinned out in floods of turpentine. Nothing is
`coloured' : the pictures consist in a succession
of colour strokes, one often washing or staining
another but always a distinguishable part of the
fabric of the picture. His drift towards certain
Albert Irving. Rider 1969
Oil on canvas. 8o x 70 in. harmonies and a certain richness now matures
naturally out of his intercourse with the picture.
The scheme is simple : a field of colour is invaded
by bars or blobs of other colour. It takes many
forms, sometimes floating free within the
Recent work by Irving is on show at New Arts margins of the canvas, sometimes locked firmly
Centre, London, from March 10 to April 3. to the edges.
Some pictures have landscape possibilities.
The essence of Albert Irvin's painting is in its These are the result of the way they were
colour and a sombre harmoniousness. It's not painted, not the source. Transparent paint and
easy to name the ingredients : looking at the hot multiple overlap create space spontaneously.
parts you might think of aubergine and ox There is a glassy depth in some pictures. Perhaps
blood, flame, marigold and the bronze of it is within this space, almost an inescapable
chrysanthemums. Where the heat is less (his consequence of his method, that he has found
pictures are never cool) there are the tones of the room he has needed for the richness and the
crushed charcoal, chestnut, burnt sage and total enfolding colour sensation that he has been
occasional flashes of emerald or kingfisher blue. concerned with for so long. q
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