Page 53 - Studio International - June 1972

over each other—this picture stood up squarely, it seems to me, is to pull out Mondrian's Reflection on Three Weeks in June 1970 is sadly,
seeming to need no recourse to drawing attention colours from their original areas and to make because of the delicacy of its execution, pretty
to the manner in which it was made. It had them into thick, glowingly poker-like lines well unreproducible. It is small in size, employs
some really good use of colour. The eight large which, hardly beginning to be shapes even at different whites and a complex combination of
shapes and eight smaller ones at first looked as their most substantial, still attempt to control grids and recessional lines, done in pencil.
if they were controlled by the sea-green, the the space and scale of an American-sized Such extreme reserve in the manner of a
serious orange, the Stephens-ink blue, and the picture surface. The dangers of pictures falling picture's address to its spectator is not common
serious black; but the other green was a risky apart in such an enterprise is obvious, and it has in recent art. We have become accustomed to the
lemon green, and below the black and near the often led to a lack of cohesion. The painting in painting whose visible stance forthrightly
rich blue was a real pink that took its place in Liverpool held together well. One curiously declares the terms by which it is to be
such company without needing to pretend that awaits a full solution of such an unlikely understood. Rita Donagh's beautiful picture is
it was mauve. Nor was this in the slightest way problem as the one Copnall has set up for not comprehensible in this way. It's very
playful; it was colour painting of real assurance. himself. Meanwhile, I regard him as the least old-fashioned. One must place it with a
Terry Frost's relegation to the also-rans was the recognized of England's worthwhile painters. certain Dada spirit of the twenties, one far
more annoying because of the evident An endearing feature of the Moores selection removed in spirit from the stridency of art
mediocrity of certain of the prize-winners. (which could look as if it wanted to court the gestures, when the best work of Duchamp and
Adrian Henri's Painting One, accompanied by a embitterment of certain established friends) Picabia took in private, personal, arcane and
regrettable poem, juxtaposed cuts of meat and was in the way in which it allowed exposure complicated thoughts, and the happily
small bunches of flowers in a line along the to painters who, like Copnall, have for one fortuitous, and made them the substance of
centre of an otherwise empty canvas. The reason or the other been lost along the way in works whose meanings were not wholly
catalogue solemnly comments 'the work was recent years. Euan Uglow, the first prize-winner, demonstrated by their obvious features. In the
painted from right to left, and each piece belongs to this category. His painting was not a major work of this type, The Large Glass,
finished before the next was begun. He left the good one; but it was not actively bad, as was pictorial reserve is taken to an extreme, and
choice of meat and flowers to the butcher and Adrian Henri's. One would not wish to say then doubled back, by the device of
florist, exploiting chance in the work'. I like the more about it. The selectors deserve gratitude transparency. There is both an avowal of what is
bit about exploiting chance. Sounds like good for the quiet revelation of an artist little known not known to the spectator and an invitation
training for exploiting millionaires. The to the general public, Rita Donagh, whose to share the privacy of experience behind the
quality of the way in which these dissimilar
organic things were painted was slightly
reminiscent of Wayne Thiebaud's manner with
choc ices, except that Henri's brushwork was
far more tentative. And whatever
reverberations were meant to be set up about
spring, death, life cycles, etc, were dispelled by
that sort of comparison; God knows, Thiebaud
is no great painter, but at least he is never, like
some of our home-grown pop people, so
ickily winsome about his own vulgarity. I
should add that this was far from being the
only painting in the exhibition which
attempted to involve reasonable adults in
faux-naif games.
John Copnall's strong appearance in
Liverpool (again, with a better painting than we
have seen from him before) trivialized
surrounding contenders at his end of the room
primarily by its concinnity of artistic intention,
behind which one could still read a peculiar
inspirational background. Copnall's career, (Above)
which has been largely ignored, began as a Adrian Henri
Royal Academy Schools gold medallist after the Painting One 1972
war, proceeded to competent figuration and 122 X 213.5 cm
Acrylic on board
then to a fifteen-year-long solitary exile as a
matter painter in rural Spain. This has
provided both an individual richness of
painting experience and an independence from
London art of his generation—contact with
which might, or might not, have been
nourishing. Copnall returned to London some
three years ago. His adoption around that time of
a staining technique in primary colours
on unprimed canvas was a daring move, and not
to be belittled by a too obvious judgement that
this was influenced by Morris Louis, of whose
work Copnall (how exile really exiles people)
was unaware when this phase began. His true
master is surely Mondrian, though his purpose,

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