Page 60 - Studio International - October 1970

Ben Nicholson's

new reliefs

David Piper

Barely two years after the major retrospective at would have seemed the mist of heresy in the discriminatory sieve of vision is now meshed to
the Tate Gallery, Ben Nicholson has a new far-off days of the sheer white reliefs of the catch and preserve also the essential savour of
harvest for the Marlborough Fine Art: thirty- thirties, yet the carved edge, the balance and the specific moment. These paintings are very
seven reliefs, of which a third about are big ones. weight of mass against mass, are as pristine and sensual : they may hold the equivalent of the
If the sheer fertility, of an artist now in his late as perfectly definitive as ever. sense not only on eye but on skin, of colour
seventies, astonishes, the important factor in In fact, in a shifty world greedy for novelty, awakening from the luminous pallor of dawn;
this unresting productivity is that it expresses a the consistency of Nicholson's aims commands or of the touch, and taste, of the patina of sea
vision that is still as exploratory as ever, and an increasing respect. The current re-issue of and salt and sun on a Welsh pebble.
art that in its vitality of luminous and delicate Circle, of which he, in 1937, was a co-editor, Nicholson's response to the particular and
rigour has no rival in the twentieth century. For underlines this. His own contribution, apart the universal has of course been varied since the
many age must mean a repetitive garrulousness from photographs of his work of the time, was war. On the one hand the drawings, with the
—the idea, in Nicholson's context, is obscenely confined to four, characteristically terse, design inexorably extrapolated from the subject
unthinkable, and in him indeed there grows characteristically fundamental, paragraphs. matter, but the subject still clearly, singingly,
instead that release of freedom and broadness From them: 'no idea can have a universal identifiable; on the other, the reliefs,
with which some great artists are blessed in application which is not solved in its own terms, monumental resolutions from which all detail
their ageing. and if any extraneous elements are introduced of the original was distilled away. Now the
The mode continues in essence the same: the the application ceases to be universal'. Or: 'the emotive range of the reliefs seems richer still: in
sometimes ambiguous planes of the relief perpetual motion of a right idea'. With apologies this show, some of the big reliefs especially have
contained by the entirely unambiguous taut to Wordsworth, one might advance Motion for me a greater impact than any of Nicholson's
carving of the edge; the balance, so dizzy, like Collected in Tranquility as a tentative definition work before. The visit to Carnac in 1965, one
that of a tight-rope walker, yet also so enduringly of an essential aspect of his work. 'Collected' in guesses, had a very profound generative effect,
monumental in its resolution, of mass against the sense of 'concentrated', involving also the and the vertical reliefs exploiting a monolithic
mass in space; often too that incised perfect shedding of everything extraneous or anecdotal. form include some of his most perfect, haunting,
circle that has so constantly reigned over and But that, over the last decade, his titles-1969 resolutions into a simplicity of endless rich
ordered the asymmetry of Nicholson's —Carnac, two circles; 1969 Urbino; three in subtlety and tension. And yet even in some of
composition. These now serve an increasing 1971 as Obidos, Portugal, and so on—have the most monumetal reliefs he can now allow
simplification of form combined with an ever tended deliberately to invoke the place in time these much more particular references to his
subtler modulation of colour and texture. A that germinated individual paintings, seems to starting-points than he would once have done.
curved edge of the relief, that has developed me pure gain, heightened by the formal echoes Nicholson is mercifully no dogmatist, and these
through the sixties, sprung like a bow, may key of Inca masonry in Peru, or by the leaping references are made with full confidence
the whole structure—at its grandest and curve against the monolith vertical in 1971, entirely justified by their modulation into the
simplest in the compulsive monolithic forms. Dolphin. If you have first-hand experience of harmony of the whole. Nature gives to art, and
The smaller scale incised curve, that he uses with the place in the title, you could even feel that art gives back to nature, and becomes an
such formidable freedom of simplicity in the Nicholson is on his way forward and back to extra quality in life. Inexhaustible Venice, at
drawings (the pencil seeming to cut space from portraiture in its profoundest sense. Thus, Nicholson's behest, adds yet another facet to
the paper as if it were stone)—the goblet or confronted by his 1961, Holkham Sands 2, its stone and sky and water in the eye of the
beaker shapes, for example—these do not appear those who have trudged through the Corsican sensitive visitor, and you can discover Nicholson
here, and the very complicated compositions that pines to the magical release, take-off, of the in Urbino as in Pisa, in Olympia as in the rock of
often incorporate still-life motifs have for the spirit over that vast Norfolk low relief, expanse Cornwall or of Yorkshire. This works of course
time being anyway been laid aside. Likewise the of sand, water, sky, may experience a most not only retrospectively. As I write this, the
colour tends to a low key of stone and earth dizzying shock of recognition: as though the taut bow, against the taut body of the small boy
colour—greys, greens, browns, and ineffably eagle's view from above the the long low shooting arrows at still-green apples in the tree
luminous off-whites, and they seem, not applied, horizontal of the man's eye view were fused in above; the swerve of the late summer swallow
but as if emanating out and through from the synthesis. In the same way, the title-clue of in over the plane of grass —these ephemeral
heart of the matter. The glimpse of aerial blue is 1970, Arezzo must add further resonance to gestures on the still evening, even these are
now rare, a clear panel of unbroken colour the painting's monumental profiles for anyone other than they once were. q
rarer still and the clang of a primary even more who remembers Piero in the still clear light of DAVID PIPER
so. Instead, the reliefs yield atmospherics that the church there. Nicholson's exquisite
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