Page 38 - Studio International - November 1972

One important device, easily missed at first opened-up and somehow stretched out colour process of becoming, and not yet there. Even
but crucial all the same, is Bannard's that controls each painting there is a supporting the purely mechanical difficulties of getting
interruption of an edge-flanking corridor set of seemingly accidental but crucial inflexions such an ambitious art into existence are
towards the top of a painting. He turns the in different hues that gives to the surface an considerable, and Bannard, like Olitski, Noland,
vertical strips back to the edge and lets the added richness, and luxuriance, of effect. Bush and the rest, is making a lot of changes.
centre bleed out, thus bringing the interior I have kept Labrador to the end. Its pale blue We wait to see what will happen. q
out of itself enough to surface it. And when the centre, opened up by differing concentrations of JOHN ELDERFIELD
interior seems to almost pour out of its place, pigment, its loose but ultimately ungestural
with liquid creamy paint sliding shape out of directness, the very confidence it exhudes, help
existence, the results are usually a lot better. make it the best recent painting in London at the
The two paintings I have mentioned are moment. The mechanics of Bannard's art that I
I 12 x 65in, as are most in the show. There are have discussed are not themselves what makes it
two smaller ones, 90 x 5 iin : Losing Light, with a so good. It is the strength of purpose and what
salmon pink/orange interior and mauve edges, comes down in the end to the very emotion of
and Cerro Mar, in green surrounded by grey. the art that gives it its power. This is something
Both have the liquidity of pigment, and are very to be felt. I am not claiming these pictures as
fine paintings. But the real beauties are the three masterpieces. Bannard has painted far more 1I will not try to justify this statement here, but refer
other large ones : Nankeen, Siberian and, resolved ones than these, and like much other the reader to my forthcoming discussion of
Olitski and new painterly art to appear in the
especially, Labrador. Nankeen is the most painterly art at the moment his seems in the December issue of Art International.
problematic of the three (and is also in yellow,
which may be significant), affecting one Anthony Green Mr and Mrs Stanley Jocelyn The Second Marriage 1972 84x 84 in.
differently each time. At first it seems almost
too beautiful, too full of incident, too delectable.
Down the left side, the blue and orange strips of
drawing sing against each other, being
separated from the interior by the gr' y of the
corridor, just extended inside the drawing for a
short space. All of the paintings manage to fuzz
the distinction between corridor and centre to
some extent, lest the drawing that separates
them appears too much a containing and
dividing contour. Nankeen does this most, but
in so doing tends to isolate the drawing, and
therefore advances the painting forward
perhaps too much at that point. The drawing
can get to look above the surface, forcing it back,
and its colour with it; which is the opposite of its
intended effect. Nevertheless, Nankeen keeps on
asserting itself, and what it sacrifices in some
areas it makes up for in others. The very
buoyancy of feeling it carries gets around the odd
idiosyncrasies. The sheer hedonism it radiates is
far longer lasting than you first assume.
Bannard's fine colour is most restrained in
Siberian, a yellow green surrounded by khaki,
but none the less for that. The careful
adjustments of paint opacities that Bannard has
made his own are never more evident. The
colour floods across the painting in glossy
waves, showing its matte underpainting in the
areas of smaller concentration and revealing
`gaps' of contrasting hue from further down still.
All the paintings have this abundance of colour
despite their being dominated by a single colour
mood. Indeed, the richness and variety of colour
details seem only permitted because they are so
contained. Scattered among the whitened,
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