Page 32 - Studio International - September 1972

London commentary examination machinery, with its concomitant
apparatus of class-markings, assessments and
the like. Every year close on two thousand
SUMMER EXHIBITIONS OF STUDENT WORK AT CHELSEA, THE SLADE, THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART, fledgling artists and designers—some of whom
HARROW SCHOOL OF ART / BRADFORD PRINT BIENNALE (until 3o SEPT.) / PHILLIP KING AT ROWAN / have been at art school for as long as seven
JOHN DAVIES AND PATRICK HERON AT THE WHITECHAPEL / WILLIAM SCOTT AT THE TATE / ED MOSES years—prepare to hear the dusty answers which
AT FELICITY SAMUEL / JOHN MITCHELL AT CAMDEN ARTS CENTRE /THE NON-OBJECTIVE WORLD' AT life is preparing for their enthusiastic questions.
ANNELY JUDA / RICHARD LINDNER AT FISCHER FINE ART / RICHARD SMITH AT KASMIN Even statistically the chances of more than two
or three of the artists each year 'making it' in
the sense of getting on to the Kasmin-Kassel-
Tate Retrospective circuit, are absurdly
remote. But that is not really the point, and on
the most basic level one tends to view these
exhibitions as a barometer of the creative
Any artist, and I am sure there are many, who two books on contemporary art, and marked climate; it is presumably the young who are
believes that the contemporary critic is a seventy-four history of art papers.
most attuned to coming changes in the
sybaritic dilettante sipping a glass of champagne I record these facts, not in any anxious stylistic weather. If so, there are depressions
as he picks his delicate way around the spirit of self-justification, nor even in an lurking around. Whether this is due to a crisis
occasional exhibition, is suffering under a attempt, which would be otiose anyway, to of confidence which seems to be affecting the
grave misapprehension. During June and July, raise the rate for the job. Basically I am whole world of painting, it is difficult to say.
for instance, I personally looked at more than concerned with pointing out certain purely There may be even accidental causes for the
five thousand paintings, some three thousand mechanical aspects of art criticism, which can general feeling of visual apathy— I have always
prints, and about three hundred pieces of all too easily evade the notice of even the most
sculpture and works in mixed media. Nor does imaginative reader, and also to hint at the been perplexed by what alchemy makes one
particular year better than another, and suspect
this include the occasional old master on difficulties involved in reducing such a body that students are probably more dependent on
which my eye may have lingered for a moment of visual experience to a verbal formula exempt each other than on their tutors. The paintings
or so. And to continue this exercise in aesthetic from injustices; and purged of facile at Chelsea this year, for instance, seemed to
logistics, I visited Venice, Bradford, Bristol, generalizations. Nowhere of course are these me for the most part exceptionally inept,
Canterbury; various of the leafier suburbs of dangers more apparent than in dealing with
the metropolis, carried around catalogues, four phenomena such as the exhibitions of students' whereas in other years they have often been
of which had a combined weight of twelve works which art colleges mount at the end of very forward-looking. The Slade, on the other
pounds, visited the studios of four artists, read the summer term, as part of the Diploma hand, where the post-diploma paintings have
in the past been curiously impoverished, this
time had a good deal of imaginative fervour.
Perhaps there is some kind of cycle of creativity.
A Foundation Course exhibition at Harrow
showed promise of future achievement—even
though the stylistic language was not very
fashionable—yet some of these students in six
years' time (if the Royal College of Art
painting this year was anything to go by) will
have become aetiolated mannerists, palely
reflecting the idioms of their tutors.
House-styles in art colleges are not nearly as
common as one would think, and nearly
everywhere are to be found the real originals
whose works pulsate with an obsessive passion
for self-expression. But this year there was a
pervading atmosphere of evasiveness—due
possibly to the hangover from the traumatic
experiences of Hornsey and Guildford, which
seem to have left a legacy of unease.
Everywhere one came across self-conscious
primitives, archly imitating the mannerisms of
the oleograph, unwitty pastiches of Gauguin or
Picasso, exercises in the nostalgic iconography
(Above) of Dad's Army, or conscientious but
John Davies
Seated Girl: Standing Man 1969-70 unsuccessful attempts to evolve some
Life size, mixed media convincing form of realism.
Whitechapel Art Gallery This sense of the doldrums was more
(Right) apparent in painting than anywhere else. The
John Davies print world was very lively, especially at the
Head of William Jeffrey with a Fence 1972
Life size, mixed media Royal College, where the influence of sculptors
Whitechapel Art Gallery such as Alf Dunn seems to be admirably
(Opposite page) invigorating. There is, of course, the
Phillip King additional point that, even at student-level,
Blue Between 1971
Painted steel, 15 ft 6in x 12 ft x 7 ft 3 in art is more subconsciously sensitive to
Rowan Gallery commercial stimulation than we are apt to
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