Page 58 - Studio International - May 1972

elaborated in No 2 to arching double-curves Such an overview does not begin to account to have been the suggestive factor: you have an
of bird necks, transformed in No. 3 to a flight for the multitude of organizing devices. Suzi unaccountable but absolutely right image that
of giraffe necks: a sort of run-on rhyme: pattern Gablik—or her grammar—is ambitious, to say will not let you alone. q
linked in pattern. No 3, again, while switching the least. There is, for example, the HOWARD ROSE
abruptly to spotted creatures, carries over a bit suggestion of a kind of creation story. In the
of the linear grass motif as grid, and adds to the first units of the series we get a prevalence of *A twelfth has been completed since this writing.
grey and yellow a patch of muted red. The dryness, infertility, grey cactus growths, dusty
density increases. No 4 is about all the relics of primitive or hieratic cultures, that over
striped things of the veldt, connected with No 3 the course swells out into full dynamic 8
by the black-and-white of both sets of succulence, with towards the last specific notes
markings, and opening out the muted red into of modern civilizations—until that final
a riot of crimson and magenta flowers spotted apotheosis of space and time. And how do her
over the lower portion; and the density— auspicing birds and butterflies figure out ?
veined fly over striped bee over striped snake These are to be found soaring overhead in all
over zebra over tiger—becomes nightmarish. but i of the canvases (the 'winged' hood of the
No 5 reverts to spots (with an echoing rearing lizard in No 8 is a small inspiration),
striped moth overhead); the magenta has prominently there, threatening or lovely,
modulated to violet and blue, there is a decided singly or in groups. A development of omens ?
tensional ebb in the cool background space of —After all this, how do Tropisms look ?
wooded hills and sky: the jungle begins to Strangely untroubled; and beautiful. Miss
thin, one can breathe. Gablik has always had a taste for rich pictorial
In this context No 6, the half-way mark, combinations that in much of her earlier work
is lovely planning. We are on a sort of spacious was inhibited by an awe of the prevailing
ruined plaza with, in the middle distance, schools. There is no such awe here. She
hushed groups of Levantine types surrounded evidently has learned to live with herself and
by vignettes of grave and dignified apes; the by herself, and to have devised a means of 9
wooded hills of No 5 have died into naked getting us to the hard core of her meaning by
mineral outcroppings; there is a flight of birds the sheer attractions of her discourse.
through the clear air. Pattern of faces, of mood. She has come a long way in her independence;
A reminder of the jungle crowds up in the —yet I could wish she would come a little
foreground but it cannot disturb; the mystery further. I could wish that her formal
is of another order, almost Magic Flute in organizations were not quite so formal, that
its resonance. she might allow her materials a greater freedom
With No 7 the quest resumes, among in their metaphysical play. She is questioning
prehistoric birds, a condor, red ibises, flame, accepted mental techniques, but what she is
flowers, dancers. There is a virtuoso display of not yet doing, I think, is questioning
'internal rhymes' : line-up of red ibises equals accepted pictorial techniques, and for all her
whirling pillar of red flame equals whirling daring there is sometimes a tameness in the
peasant dancers equals (perhaps) gaudy flowers final result. She can lay speculation against
of peasant festival. No 8 is pure reptiliousness, speculation and come up with a really fresh
noteworthy for the felt rather than the seen possibility, but immediately it is bound upon a
patterning of minute scales, and heightened by grid, balances are set, and the possibility freezes,
the really poisonous brilliance of the colour—a does not open as it should. It could account in I0
perverse development of the gay colour of No 7. part for the untroubled beauty. Because
No 9 is on the surface of it another breather—the shapeliness is a weakness as much as a strength
forms are relatively large and spaced—but not for of systems. There is a tyranny in it over the
long. We are being watched by a multitude of chance or shadowed aspects of experience.
horned things, mountain goats, water buffalo, It does not allow for that most potent of all
musk oxen, the curving and segmentation of natural (and aesthetic) forces, the mutation.
whose great headgear uncomfortably echo the Maybe Miss Gablik ought occasionally to be
reptiles. In a row with the buffalo, staring as following instead of leading her interesting
balefully as they, grasping the handlebar-horns materials, and to hell with synthesis.
of a machine that fixes us with 2 red lights, sits a It happens too—though rarely anymore—
motorcyclist on his motorcycle. Down in a that she will 'think in' an image, and the
corner some asters eye us too. A bated, ominous limited resonance can be jarring among so
picture. But No io is all innocence, an incredible much that goes on and on in the head. An
teeming of dainty jewel-hued birds and berries example is the motorcyclist and the water
and flowers—every colour of the spectrum here buffalo of No 9. The visual coordination
comes into play—overwhelming and reducing is good, and there are affinities in the potential
the canvas to a tiny interior unit of experience, dangers of each, even to the imminent deadly
as though the vision had turned microscopic: 'charge' (maybe affinities also with the ancient Suzi Gablik 8-10
cellular pattern. Whereupon No II opens upon Minoan sport of bull-leaping, in the way the 8 Tropisms 2 1970
the largest things we can see, large beyond cyclist lays hold of the handlebars)— but such Oil and collage 24 X 24 in.
colour, large almost beyond experience or the mortising is very out of depth in these 9 Tropisms 3 1971
possibility of pattern save for this pattern of emblematic essays. Take as a contrast the Oil and collage 24 x 24 in.
largeness itself. An elephant, an ancient dead Japanese wrestlers of No 2, where yellow, the 10 Tropisms 6 1971
crater, a mist that covers the world. yellowness (and/with age) of anything, appears Oil and collage 24 x 24 in.

228