Page 39 - Studio International - November 1972

ANTHONY GREEN AT ROWAN GALLERY, LONDON, `Some of the other influences were van innermost feelings. They tell stories about
6 OCTOBER TO 2 NOVEMBER Gogh, Hals, van Eyck, Soutine, even Buffet my immediate surroundings, about people who
and Sargent. I take a lot of pleasure out of are close to me — my wife, relatives, children. I
painters who express the joy of painting. I want them to reach a wide section of the
like Rubens for this. I love his bottoms. Rubens community, the expert as well as "the man
loved them, loved painting them, touching in the street", because I feel that the
them. I also responded to the School of Paris appreciation of paintings exists at many levels.
painters. My mother is French, and part of And if I don't communicate to a large body of
the strength of my paintings is their people I consider I have failed. I'm suspicious
Frenchiness; when they're good they're good, of the man who just says, "That's beautiful",
`I am now 33. I work a six-day week, at and when they're bad they're very bad. It's a because I'm suspicious of elegance. But I
home, starting at 9.3o. I stop for lunch, start risk I'm prepared to take. I do take wouldn't sneer at the man who said he liked
again at 1.45, and work till teatime, when the aesthetic risks. I don't feel I'd have been able Hals because of the lace. Paintings are enjoyed
children come home. After that I work till 6. to take them so blatantly if I'd been all English. at many intellectual levels. I still get a kick
If the painting's going well, or there are picture `One of my preoccupations over the last six out of the window cleaner saying, "I like that
problems, I work on after supper, looking at the or seven years has been to reconcile illusions pot of flowers".
canvas or working out tomorrow's problems, and the physical object. I'm not able to give `That's why the Royal Academy appealed to
up until 9. I work like this 11 months of the you illusion to infinity; one tries to give space my sense of the public, that 40,000 people were
year. I'm a compulsive painter, I have to paint, in a two-dimensional sense. I'm almost trying going to walk past an Anthony Green. "How
I've never done anything else. Though many to push the back of the picture in. These things on earth can you bear to be seen hanging with
things I do I destroy because I'm not being have happened instinctively, using shaped all those ghastly people ?" The idea that if you
honest, or I think I'm not. I suppose I complete canvases, or a shallow picture plane. The first put your paintings in with the rabble they
twelve to fourteen canvases a year. canvas I ever painted which wasn't a rectangle won't look good never seemed to me imporant.
`In the last three years I've made my living was in 1965. And my interest was aroused, I `I want to communicate my feelings to as
by selling paintings. I visit at two art schools think, by early Flemish and Italian paintings. many people as possible because I want to give
about one day a term because I enjoy meeting I painted a Tower of Babel with a circular top. pleasure. That's a pretty loose, simple word,
students and seeing their pictures. Before that It just seemed a nice shape. And it was about but it does include a lot of other more
I was in the US on a two-year fellowship. this time that the revelation came to me that sophisticated ideas. Pictorially my pictures
And before that I taught three days a week at as your image developed you could tack a bit are very complicated. I'm very interested in
Highgate School. on or take a bit off. So I was cutting wet the way a spectator visually reads a painting.
`I've only ever had one gallery. I started there canvas. I also made one or two Cimabue-type If occasionally I seem to jolt his ability to read
in 1962, and my relationship has been one of crosses, a lovely shape. But it was a blind alley. my paintings, then I think that I have added a
mutual trust. I've found that a real support. I've People thought they were blasphemous. little to our pictorial language. And occasionally
had other offers and always turned them down. `There's a sort of puritan content to the way I organise the picture plane so that the
`I first started painting when I was seven, I organise a painting. I was a practicing spectator can't take it for granted, it just
when I consciously covered my bedroom Catholic until I was 16. Then I began confronts him. A simple reaction from a
walls with poster-colour paintings of Mickey questioning. I had all the middle-class spectator is perfectly acceptable when he is
Mouse annuals. Later, when I went to Highgate hang-ups, about sex and so on. And when I confronted with complexity.
School, I met one of the crucial influences was about 20 one of my difficulties was to try `Quite a lot of my recent paintings are
on my work, Kyffin Williams. One of the and get rid of the feeling of guilt. This hymns of love. My wife is the central fact in
things I learnt from him was the way to use puritanism means that I never invent an my life. I'm very happily married. I don't
paint, chunks of it; he had a gutsy way of object, because that would be cheating. want to work away from her. Continually I
painting. Technically, he showed me how to If I'm going to get away with the object I'm find myself painting pictures celebrating this
make an orange shine. It was like being in an going to do it. Sometimes I've pushed too hard. great happiness. Even the paintings of myself
artist's studio. It would have been easy on the eye to take and my wife making love, very private
`Then I went to the Slade. The school had things out. But it's a wicked little game that occurrences, painted at home, I want to show
a strong influence on me, not through other one plays with oneself, really — the analogy in public, like standing on a roof screaming,
students, I was too egocentric for that, but of the juggler trying to keep a lot of balls in "I'm in love!" But at the same time I know
through the whole bit of the professionalism of the air. And that quality of picture-making my work is a celebration of a bourgeois way of
artists, and the Slade's long history as a school is important to me. life. I've lived a middle-class way of life, little
of drawing. "I've got to be able to draw". I `At the present time I paint much larger. affected by art school or travel. We're bringing
hadn't got the natural gift, but I drew damn One of the reasons is that American art came up our children in this way. I suspect they'll
hard for about two years. In those drawings to Britain. I'm very aware of the size my be full of middle-class values. We don't know
was the first germ of fixing figures in space. paintings have got to. And in a way I hope any others. It's an imperfect situation, a bit
Now I don't do much drawing. I make what I they'll get smaller. But I'm not going to force like democracy — we haven't discovered a
call "diagrams". Drawings would limit me it. These things sneak up on you. better way'. q
too much. `In my paintings I want to communicate my ANTHONY GREEN
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