Page 45 - Studio International - December 1972

art. The scene in Birmingham (Walker's home more of these categories. The immanent sense This would tie in with a reputed source for them,
town) was not a performance, but it was an of identity of Walker's shapes is so special as in David Smith sculpture of the open, linear,
impermanent personal display of much to have no parallel within modern painting see-past type. Thus, as the medium and support
significance. (though it's interesting that there may be such a of the drawings so much emphasizes a thin
There has been no publicly-shown painting thing in sculpture). They are as immediately fragility of surface, the shapes within them are
of Walker's which fully deploys the developing recognizable as revelations, and as subsequently either forced into too sharp an individuality as
repertoire of his shapes as seen in these haunting. Their continual presence, modified outline (which I thought happened in a trial
drawings. One could see in the Ikon show that and extended, does not appear as the repetition run for this project at NIGEL GREENWOOD
the chalk medium had modulated the tense of a motif or a trademark, but as the gradual three months ago), or on the other hand are
though embracing unity between vast areas of a unpacking of immense riches. They are made to disappear. And this latter is what
differently inflected surface and the shapes' difficult to describe: there are the hewn-off occurred in Birmingham, during the four days
own tendency as prominent elements, whether ovals, familiar since the trapezoid paintings; the it took to do the drawings. The shapes' discrete
locked or floating, to dominate that surface. In rearing half-moon pointed at its left-hand being was emulged in surfaceness.
the drawings the shapes become reticent, while circumference and encompassing within the The first of the drawings to be completed,
there are more of them, and the expanses of the scimitaral outline two complementary bulging New St Blackboard, was the most like a previous
work, at least in the horizontal drawings, crescoids ; arising, pausing, rising again and Walker painting, and was especially
become of paramount importance. The shapes suddenly descending block, closed with a long reminiscent — because of the same vertical
are worth talking about. Although they have vertical at the bottom (rather like an outline format and general structure — of three of the
forbears, there are no specific precedents for from Philip King's Dunstable Reel, as it paintings shown at the Venice Biennale last
them in post-war abstract painting. They are happens); and a swooping and sometimes summer. On the other hand, it was more
not figurative, nor decorative, they are not jagged holly shape which is extensible centralized in the area of the painting not
quite areas, they are not calligraphic, nor according to circumstances. What seems to be controlled by the shapes than they were, in that
emblematic, nor symbolic, nor pictographic, happening in the drawings is that new shapes very fine chalk had been rubbed towards a kind
nor are they signs. All other uncials since being introduced are less amenable to of interior a little to the right above the middle
Abstract Expressionism have been in one or modelling. They are getting more silhouettey. of the drawing. It is probably wrong to say

John Walker, Deirdre 1972, chalk on wall prepared as blackboard, 10 ft x 20 ft, Ikon Gallery

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