Page 42 - Studio International - January 1972

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one begins to appreciate the problems that have presence alone is not enough. This is the pre-
to be overcome and the issues that have to be dominant effect of the Waddington paintings.
put aside on the way to ambitious art. This Many seem to have derived from his interest in
present note does not seek to 'condemn' these collage (and some paintings do use collage).
three painters. Far from it: their integrity is not Some vertical works use a centre panel to
in question. But criticism can only deal with the contain a playful sequence of 'falling' elements—
materials it is presented with, and in all these interlocked circles or overlapping flaps—and
cases the artists do themselves far less than justice. other, horizontal, pictures are based on paired
Terry Frost's exhibition at WADDINGTON semicircles arranged to form lines across the
was, even more than Moon's, an unfortunate canvas. Some look simply 'arranged' —especially
lapse in taste. Like Moon, Frost has in the past those which use collage; but some so depend on
produced some exciting paintings, even though the concept (translated into paint) that as
his ambitions have been more surely regional pictures they appear incredibly ignorant. One
than Moon's. His response to 'advanced' art has supposes that the clumsiness of the drawing is
never been a radical one and perhaps because affected, but one is never sure. When most
of this his paintings, at their best, have possessed conceptually ambitious—in the perspex reliefs—
a quiet authority unmoved by fashion. His there is such a blatant pictorial failure; but
weakness, however, has been in what might be where Frost is less `ambitious'—in a smaller
described as a certain whimsicality—a fondness close-hued painting, August September 197o—he
for a kind of playful understanding of pictorial is far better. And there is only one ambitious
composition. The elements in his paintings are painting in the exhibition which comes close to
too often made to 'perform' —as if their integral realizing itself—Spring, a flat, clean, slightly
Youngerman-like work. Too often, the simple
10 II
concept is made to bear the whole weight—and
never more than in a jokey 'laced-up' drawing
where string is used to connect the principal
forms.
It may be objected that my criticisms of these
three exhibitions are unfair in that they dismiss
what I have called the conceptual aspects of the
work, and that my arguments depend exclusively
on what is usually called a 'formalist' standpoint.
I would not deny the slant of my approach; but
go further and say that so far as art is concerned
(excepting ideology, which is something
different) to pretend that there is any alternative
to this is to mistake the nature of the medium. It
is the least, and the most, we expect of art that
it bears looking at. Looking is the role of critics;
but also of artists, and my present complaint is
that these three artists have, at the moment,
avoided an important part of their
responsibilities. q
JOHN ELDERFIELD
1'Mondrian, Newman, Noland: two notes on changes
of style', Artforum, December 1971. I might add here
that the new Stellas also have something of the
Vorticist about them. Comparison with some draw-
ings by Bomberg and William Roberts, exhibited
nearby at the Fine Arts Society, shows that Stella's
`expressiveness' is likewise created in terms of a taut,
outwards-thrusting design.
2These paintings were discussed by Charles Harrison
in Studio International, March 1968.
3I had not seen these paintings when I wrote (in the
article cited in note 1, above) that a grid format is too
often 'merely a contextual symbol in, or of, art rather
than a specifically pictorial configuration', and that
such a format can readily operate 'on the symbology
of a structure-convention, displaying the "framework"
of what we understand to be modernist art as a
symbol, or signal of intent, that what we are looking
at should be considered as being art', but Moon's new
paintings could not be a better example of this in
their presentation to achieve effect.

Terry Frost illus.
9 Packed Rise 1971 96 x 72 in.
to Spring 1971 96 x 36 in.
1i Red Black & White 1971 96 x 36 in.