Page 48 - Studio International - June 1972

where one variation gives way to another. Kafka and Buber. It may also have been one refusal to work within an alien rhetoric. His
Floris, painted earlier in 1964, shows the source of his interest in, and development of, paintings are curiously self-contained,
beginning of the medallion as an island which art nouveau, with its symbol of the plant : evolving as a continuous and inevitable set of
forms the centre of a continuous crimson domesticated nature—the contrived and the variations, which progressively state his theme
ribbon which covers like a veil the deep carefree. Richard Morphet, in his sensitive until it reaches its most universal expression
space beneath, itself alive with informal, introduction, points out how jewellery intrigued in the sequence of the white paintings. There is
many-coloured discs. One can see then the Cohen. How he saw in it the opposition between excitement in following the gradual relaxation
logic of the variation as it proceeds from the the natural and the contrived. This way of of the classification and frames of the early
veiled openness of Floris to the final annihilation reflecting upon experience in terms of basic period and the emergence of the question mark
of space in the frozen medallions of oppositions, nature/culture and within the line of Casino 196o which, through a series of
Blue Burrow, Green/blue shape on black, Green cultural, opposing the formal with the informal, transformations, develops into the inter-
shape, Red shape, until with Red flash and Blue the contrived with the carefree, would seem to twining of the Knot 1962, reappears in the
spot we have the transition to the white me to arise out of an experience which has ribbon paintings of the middle 196os and dies
paintings. Perhaps the end of the ribbon been initially shaped by a religious faith which in the congested, frozen coils of the
paintings, with their polished tight coils itself expresses the God/Man relationship medallion pictures of 1966. Layered over, yet
abruptly stilled, serve as a final punctuation through a strong classificatory grid in continuous with this movement, are the panel
mark, which ends one variation and at the which the pure and the polluted, inside and paintings of 1962-63, each containing sets of
same time announces the new. The ring of dust outside, the sacred and the profane, are differently sized panels, sometimes as many as
marks both the end and the beginning. explicitly articulated. Perhaps Cohen's sharp thirty, which as the series develops undergo
Cohen's theme is differently expressed in memory of the sideboard in the living room their own evolution. Both progressions
early work. Here the presentation is initially should not be translated too literally, culminate in a remarkable group of allegorical
held in a strong grid, either as in Shepheard's perhaps it points to his Jewish origins. Full paintings in which the act of whipping off
1961, by a series of frames of decreasing size, Judaism's strong system of classification and masking tape, signals both the completion and
or as in Hermes 1961 through a division of the frames is responsible for its internal orderings interruption of the work. Abruptly the canvas
canvas into four basic blocks. Under and over and repetition. On the other hand, Cohen's is cleared, and small dense interrupted patterns
this basic grid Cohen's informal order weaves interest in the random, the still to be determined, are stuck like transfers upon an open white
a series of well-bounded events. This tension the process of becoming, places him in quite surface. Here, everything is scaled down, rather
between the formal and the informal, between another tradition. What is remarkable is that like looking at the problem through the wrong
order and its interruption, between ritual and these ideas are translated and developed end of a telescope. Yet it is in the white
play, can be seen very explicitly in the period with unique inventiveness in visual terms. paintings that the theme of emergence,
between 1961 and 1963. It is worth spelling The arrangement of the paintings at the order, spontaneity, repetition, development,
out this dialectic, for I believe it carries us to the Hayward makes it possible for the first time to emergence, is stated in the most sublime form;
heart of Cohen's work; to the theme he realise what this painter is about. His utter not as a message, but as an act of communion.
endlessly explores. Whereas ritual creates a refusal to accept the contemporary rhetorics The ring of dust a boy left has been
frame for experience, is order made palpable, is not so much an act of defiance as it is a transformed into the creative act itself.
is the condensed message underlying the
process of repetition, we are sometimes only
made aware of its constraint, of the system of
categories ritual holds together, by some
outrageous act, by some intrusion of the absurd,
even by some playful gesture. Any of these acts
temporarily lifts the weight of the controlling
set of categories so that we can experience
for a moment a sense of freedom, a sense of the
infinite possibilities of things. This tension
between ritual and its interruption, between
order and the absurd, between the formal and
the informal, is possibly at the heart of the
creative act, and in Cohen's work it is the theme
he continuously explores. It also, perhaps, lies
behind his interest in the writings of Camus,

(Top left) Matter of Identity I 1963
Oil and egg tempera on cotton duck
2440 x 2440 mm (96 x 96 in.)
Private collection
(Top right) Story 1964
Oil and egg tempera on canvas
2440 x 3050 mm (96 x 120 in.)
Coll : the artist

(Far left) Floris 1964
Oil and egg tempera on canvas
1830 x 1830 mm (72 x 72 in.)
Coll : Tate Gallery
(Left) Blue Burrow 1966
Acrylic on canvas
2440 X 3350 mm (96 X 132 in.)
Coll : the artist
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