Page 47 - Studio International - March 1972

January, seems to be making the most of a very seemed more like a blueprint than a fully stylistic identity he formulated as far back as
small gift indeed. These ten beautifully bound realized experience. 1949. The elements of that sudden
and printed books, laid out like sacrificial Emotionalism was, however, well to the fore breakthrough—a planar interaction between
offerings on an altar for our perusal, in Leon Kossoff's one-man show at the massive banks of luminous colour, a passive
painstakingly enumerated every year from 1969 WHITECHAPEL ART GALLERY. And the collection handling which invites the spectator to project
back to prehistory. The shock comes with the of paintings, extending from 1953 up to last his own feelings into the cosmic haze—need not
discovery that our puny modern civilization year, provided the first opportunity to view this be rehearsed here. But what does now appear to
spans only a few pages in the final volume, curiously isolated painter at full stretch. By be definitively exposed is the sadly repetitive
thereby encouraging us all to escape from a isolated I really mean marooned, for Kossoff is nature of the later work. For all the dogged
myopic time-scale and think about our one of those uncontaminated figures like sincerity with which Rothko pursued his
relative insignificance in terms of the earth's William Roberts who stay stranded forever in transcendental vision of man as a lonely
evolution. A humbling thought, certainly, and one fixed period. Where Roberts seems always existentialist being, acting out a universally
conveyed with Oriental gravity through the to have remained crystallized inside the tubular tragic drama, he found it impossible to expand
endless columns of numerals. But I felt that vocabulary he perfected in the twenties, the means whereby this insight was conveyed.
the concept here was paradoxically outweighed Kossoff still belongs in spirit to the early fifties, After losing myself in the mystical aura of the
by the sheer elaboration of its material when he received his most formative inspiration first few pictures I viewed, the monotony of his
embodiment : all those presentation volumes, at Bomberg's Borough Polytechnic evening compositional formula gradually destroyed my
all that bulk filling up a room to so little effect. classes. Both he and Auerbach are direct lineal empathy. And then the absence of any renewed
My incurable Western disposition reacted descendants from the late Bomberg, who invention became distressingly apparent:
impatiently against this contemplative Eastern attempted to chart both the underlying Rothko, over a span of twenty years, became
history lesson. framework and the mass of a landscape or figure content to play around with an endless
A far less glib examination of time was also through the very substance of his brushstrokes. procession of variations in the same basic
on view at NIGEL GREENWOOD'S GALLERY in In a way, it could be said that he approached cliché. Once I withdrew my involvement from
Sloane Gardens, where David Lamelas's Film the concerns of an Abstract Expressionist like the paintings, they began to look suspiciously
Script was simultaneously screened through De Kooning, except that he never took enough facile, even sweet-toothed. Their tonal
one film and three slide projectors. Lamelas risks to liberate himself fully from a orchestrations, in particular, often bordered on
chose a simple, utterly unemotive episode Cezannesque devotion to appearances. And his the chic, despite Rothko's repeated assertion
based on a girl's movements during an two pupils share this limitation, pushing that he was not concerned with colour for its
afternoon— walking through a park towards her Bomberg's loose, slashing style through to a own sake.
car, driving to a flat, reading, telephoning, new extreme, piling the paint up into How could such a sincere, courageous and
going out into the street again—as the raw corrugated heaps in their efforts to attain a more uncompromising man end up trapped inside
material for his analysis. Time as an objective complete synthesis of external observation and this tyrannical, self-perpetuating formal
fact was given through the film, which acted as internal feeling. As their images grew in prison ? I would suggest that the very
an anchor for the• main focus of the piece : a trio density, projecting from the picture surface completeness of the style he introduced in the
of slide sequences, each of them structured like sculptural reliefs, so they built up a late forties contributed to his downfall. As
differently to dramatize time as a wildly scaffolding of impulsive outlines around their Rothko became more and more caught up in an
subjective experience. They flashed mercilessly sensations. Hitherto, Auerbach has usually abstract world which invited the extinction of
on and off throughout the duration of the film, been considered the finer of the pair, largely selfhood, so he progressively rescinded the
seizing on arbitrary moments, elaborating on a because Marlborough have always exhibited initiative which should have insisted on
movement, a glance or an urban view, him regularly. But now Kossoff can be seen as developing a more flexible language. And yet I
contradicting their neighbours and then in many ways the more convincing painter : the do not think he regarded this terrible erosion of
accompanying each other in presenting triple furrowed ridges of his pigment are used to creative responsibility with equanimity.
views of the same activity. They were disruptive, embody a genuinely haunted vision of life, However prolific and assured his later production
explanatory and mysterious by turn, and so while Auerbach's painterly orgies too often may appear, it is marked by an increasingly
pressing on my attention that I entirely failed seem unrelated to the monumental repose of depressive gloominess which highlights
to catch the film's version of the one real his compositions. Kossoff's most resolved Rothko's inner desperation. He could never
incident in the whole episode : the breaking of a pictures, such as the 1971 view of Willesden have entirely forgotten how his 1947
glass. But perhaps this description makes the Junction, Morning in October, have a tortured Possibilities essay had insisted that the
project sound too exclamatory. Lamelas's own strain of energy about them which helps to successful picture must be for the artist, 'as for
personality was, in fact, very much in the atone for their attachment to stale pictorial anyone experiencing it later, a revelation, an
background, and he presented his work with conventions. He may not be a naturally gifted unexpected and unprecedented resolution of
the self-effacement that characterized his artist, and many of his canvases are either an entirely familiar need'. If this was Rothko's
earlier photographic exploration of time in downright clumsy or hopelessly overworked; stated ideal, then he must surely have admitted
Antwerp and Brussels. Only the relentless pace but when he does succeed in turning his narrow, to himself that his later work simply did not
of the slides as they clicked through their unadventurous obsession to account, the passion provide that vital shock of surprise any longer.
projectors and confounded the steady, comes through. And there are signs, in the And the final trio of paintings in the Hayward
measured pace of the film revealed the artist's recent Children' Swimming Pool series, that show, appallingly demoralized both in
temperament in action, controlling our Kossoff has actually extended his range: the conception and execution, go a long way
responses to the point of outright bullying. ragged, syncopated rhythm set up by the towards explaining the mood that made their
That was all. Despite the taut discipline, there brushstrokes this time parallels the noise and creator commit suicide soon after completing
was a faintly academic air about the whole movement of a public bath, rather than them. The black fields dominating all three
exercise, as if the barrage of techniques had reflecting a more generalized and self-indulgent pictures contain no hope, proving that Rothko
somehow taken over from the need to make an form of angst. had given up the unequal struggle and finally
expressive statement. The ensemble was If Kossoff is hopefully on the verge of an acknowledged that it was no use going through
conducted with great professionalism and incipient maturity, Mark Rothko's the motions of an evolution which obstinately
rigour, but too much emotion was drained out retrospective at the HAYWARD GALLERY refused to materialize. q
of it. Film Script is an apt title : the piece illuminated his failure to enlarge on the

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