Page 46 - Studio International - December 1972

rubbed towards, however, for this chalk, at progressive rhythms of the shapes. They are in the drawing do not relate to each other,
its finest and most powdery, was put down in certainly not the residue of any grid structure, being too far apart, as internal lines they
such a way as to leave no evidence of directional nor do they relate to that division between predicate order, moderation and the finite more
impulse or application — as if it were sprayed lower and higher zones of a painting that than the outside framing edge does. One's
on, in fact. I recall that there were fairly appeared, for instance, in Sometime II and sense that this is so is doubtless because of
similar interior passages in Darby Bannard's Green Light, in which the shapes were kept there not being any physical difference, apart
vertical paintings at Kasmin this September. below the dividing line. Nor are they trackers, from the absence of drawing, between the
This may be coincidental. An extraneous factor, in any active sense (in the sense of having the picture and the wall. But this in itself suggests
that a vertical band caused by some masked illusion of motion built into their relationship the rightness of Walker's activity in
irregularity in the support ran through the to the rest of the picture). They do move to Birmingham, that it wasn't at all an eccentric
middle of the drawing, emphasized the centre some extent but this is paradoxically because thing to do, in the terms of his art. Significantly,
of New St Blackboard to the point of weakening of their steadiness, perfectly adjusted to Walker has always had a definite distrust of
it. But in any case it was necessarily the two pictorial incident which vaults or dives, which painting that arrives at its final form by being
horizontal drawings, twenty feet long and ten lowers, or proclaims itself, in their company — cropped, and I feel that these internal lines
feet high, which seemed to carry more of most beautifully in the cursive rightward flow may be understood as something of an
Walker's concerns, most movingly presented of the upper part of Sometime. Again, the role affirmation of his attitudes towards the
the differences between the evanescent and the of surface, the fact of surface, is dominant. boundaries of painting: briefly, that the
standing of major art, and were strikingly — the The line appears, is lost, and reappears among boundaries are within the possibilities of
word insistently presents itself— metaphysical. the shapes and brushy flourishes. Just as the painting, and that the possibilities are endless.
This was largely because of a perceptible shapes are cut by the flourishes and swathes, What we saw in Birmingham may have come
shift from the expressive charge carried by the and thus lose their path (or are sometimes near to that very rare thing in modern painting
shapes to the implications of the expanses, and reversed, a chalk line on black becoming a which, since Pollock, has haunted artists of
their expansiveness. A new factor in the scraped line through chalk as it travels through deep imagination in the tradition to which
horizontal drawings which is intimately a contradirectional passage) so does the Walker belongs: a real sense of the absolute
connected with this is the physically definite horizontal line become subdued or submerged communicated solely by the means which
though otherwise somewhat mysterious role at some points. But its notional existence is are proper to pictorial art. This may sound an
of the horizontal lines drawn from edge to edge never in doubt — which is not the case with the impossibly romantic ambition nowadays, but
of the picture, one a little above the bottom drawing of the shapes, as some of them, some very good paintings have made it quite
framing edge, the other rather below the top. especially at the right of Deirdre, become evidently substantive. The fact that such art not
They are of an ochry claret colour. There are lost in speculation. The lines feel like a constant seldom dramatizes the means by which it is
normally two types of lines across big abstract in a world of infinite possibilities where moods made is relevant to the work in Birmingham.
paintings which don't depend on stripes: can change as clouds can move. This is most For there was a sense in which it was quite
markers and trackers. In some paintings they apparent in Sometime because of the abundance transparently about its facture — because of
have been the same thing, but for the purposes of effects within the drawing, the touches, the candid use of the medium — and also about
of argument we can separate the functions. drags, erasures, the parts done with a brush, the working activity of being an artist. The
Walker's lines are not markers: they don't the parts done by hand, the chalk smeared close relationship of Walker's drawing to his
indicate avowedly separate zones, i.e. officially around or flung on in splatters. It's an paintings (and the practice of using a
demarcated regions of the work, nor do they overflowing work, and it seems formally blackboard in the studio) indicate this. But so
act as a pivot or ground base for the significant therefore that while the two lines too, much more, does the sheer artistic mileage
between New St Blackboard and Deirdre. The
Installation view, Ikon Gallery, foreground: New St Blackboard 1972, 10 ft x 7 ft former is a beautiful work which is perhaps too
much like the transcript of a painting that had
already been made. The next drawing to be
completed, Sometime, was a fine and
utterly convincing resolution of things to do
with shape, surface, and interior space which
have been present in the paintings — not
necessarily as problems, things to be resolved —
but had never been declared to this extent.
And Deirdre was exceptional. The size of a very
large painting, it revealed itself as having that
kind of presence and expansive seriousness,
and yet there was no way at all in which one
could imagine it as a painting. Its extremist
individuality well accorded with the fact that
it was the least material of the works, and the
first to go, falling and drifting from the wall as
dust; so did the boldness of the fact that most
of its passages were obviously dabbed on by
one of those extended oval blackboard rubbers,
whose repeated outline, in fanned-out flurries,
formed separate areas of activity which were
only minimally bound together by the sort of
copious streaming that, in Sometime, allowed
attention to nuanced effect to be borne along
by the whole movement of the work.
TIM HILTON
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