Page 36 - Studio International - November 1972
P. 36

Vordemberge-Gildewart formulated his         In the late work stronger pictorial order is   WALTER DARBY BANNARD AT KASMIN GALLERY,
      language of form elements more and more    added to the graceful compositions.       LONDON, 13 SEPTEMBER TO 7 OCTOBER
       precisely and refined the colours from primary   Horizontal-vertical structures multiply
      three-tonal down to the subtlest tone, attaining a   themselves. The colour, too, becomes deeper
      mastery in colour elements which made him the   and stronger. Vordemberge-Gildewart
      authentic colourist among the constructivists.   described it 'as dark organ tones mixed with the
        When he abandoned the use of             lighthearted sound of chamber music'.     Because Darby Bannard writes as well as paints,
      three-dimensional elements in the later work   Vordemberge-Gildewart saw his work almost   anyone interested in good paintings - and good
      (half-moons, etc.) he did not forgo the space   as a scientific experiment - objective, clear,   writing - gets to be well briefed on the
       dimension. At first lines or triangles appear   uncompromising - in which chance played no   mechanics of painting that Bannard is involved
      above the frame like darts. The picture is not   part. Nothing was created out of a momentary   with. And like most painters who write, the
       regarded as an isolated phenomenon but as an   impulse, nothing out of personal emotion. Yet   subjects he chooses tend to parallel the
      art conglomeration of a wide circle of happenings   even so the work is a pure mirror of the   obsessions of his own art, as they change from
      and conditions. The picture becomes a key   personality of a man who sets order against the   time to time. Hence, his marvellously lucid
       which opens vistas and insights. . . . It can also   chaos, sustained by the belief that elementary   discussion of Hofmann's Rectangles back in 1969
       mean the opposite, as when the picture, as   form and colour constellations are not only   when his own painting organized its loose
       though looking for protection, retracts from the   aesthetic games but can be exemplary models.   painterliness around fairly specific rectilinear
       periphery into the centre.                WILLY ROTZLER                             shapes; and hence his fine article on Still last
                                                                                           year when these shapes began to disappear and
                                                                                           surface itself gained new prominence.
                                                                                             Surface has been receiving special attention
                                                                                           by a whole range of ambitious painters of late.
                                                                                           Jules Olitski was the first (in the mid sixties) to
                                                                                           reassess the sufficiency of transparent colour
                                                                                           stained into a canvas, and to find new ways of
                                                                                           getting paint back onto the surface of the canvas
                                                                                           itself. His recent work in scraped spread colour
                                                                                           continues on the path that spraying began.
                                                                                           Poons, Bush, Noland, Dzubas and some others
                                                                                           have, in their different ways, all been
                                                                                           contributing to this new painterliness; but
                                                                                           Olitski, I believe, is its most significant - as well
                                                                                           as seminal - practitioner.' Writing about
                                                                                           Olitski in 197o, Bannard pointed out that
                                                                                           since pale close-value painting can easily close
                                                                                           up and turn into a big flat object (that is,
                                                                                           appear too much an arbitrarily concluded
                                                                                           section of pure phenomena), Olitski is obliged
                                                                                           to pay special attention to the edges. The very
                                                                                           quality of surface in Olitski's work prevents
                                                                                           any interference with the interior by edge
       Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart Composition no. 6o 1931 Oil on canvas 181 1/8 in. x 23 3/8 in., 46 x 6o cm   repetition to get the painting stabilized, and
                                                                                           there is nothing there that calls for it, so
                                                                                           Olitski brings in the edges by drawing, to
                                                                                           separate the paintings as paintings from the
                                                                                           physical object they comprise.
                                                                                             The new vertical paintings that Bannard is
                                                                                           showing at Kasmin have something analagous.
                                                                                           They learn - and learn well - from Olitski's
                                                                                           example (although the very fact of their
                                                                                           verticality, and edge-aligned strips, also recalls
                                                                                           Noland's recent formats). The edge-aligned
                                                                                           drawing they contain is not very far inside the
                                                                                           paintings, and cannot go very far inside, for
                                                                                           the same reason as in Olitski's work; but it is
                                                                                           far enough inside for it to work very differently
                                                                                           to Olitski's drawing. It hints at internal shape -
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