Page 27 - Studio International - April 1973

A drama of Christopher Fox writes on the memorial
exhibition of Adrian Stokes's paintings held at
modesty: Adrian the Tate 21 February-4 March: Of the fifteen
paintings by Adrian Stokes, exhibited recently
Stokes on his at the Tate Gallery, eleven were painted whilst
he was suffering from cancer. They form a
painting completion to a life dedicated to the
understanding of art, and represent in sum a
Apart from the more or less irrelevant fact that I consummate achievement.
always want to do it I find I can speak about my The remaining pictures include a landscape of
own painting only in a negative way. For olive trees, a small but very fine canvas of the
instance, did it have any merit, that would be Piazza Sant Eustachio, Rome, a glowing canvas
due, as are the deficiencies, to its lack of of an olive terrace, and finally a still-life. The
protestation or flourish or even of impact as final paintings follow naturally from the earlier,
that is felt today by those most interested in but all have still-lifes as their overt theme. They
contemporary movements. It seems to be represent, it seems to me, a furthering of his
changeless, as are my tastes, though these have intuitive responses and his aims as a painter.
always been entirely catholic, unlike my The last paintings depart from the earlier,
painting. however, in being at once more painterly in
It seems that if I say the words 'art' and execution and more immediately bracing.
`artist' quickly, I have a picture for 'art' of an One of the most resolved paintings depicts a
entity that is always there, but for 'artist' of corner of a table on which stand bottles and a
someone who scribbles, puts his impress, his cup. On further observation we discover that
energy and tension on this pre-existing art. the relationship between foreground and
Obviously this is wrong, because it is the artist background is not fixed. Each object claims our
who makes art. One could make a point about a attention in a fluctuating and undecided way;
vast accumulated heritage, but even this cannot thus we are compelled to adjust one perception
be assimilated into a severe image called art, to another. Moreover, the overall compositional
glowing like a still and radiant flower. All the design compensates for the lop-sided axis of the
same, such an image of fiction has haunted me cup and for the fading, almost non-existent
since my first visit to Italy more than forty contours of the bottles towards the right. The
years ago. It seemed to me, then as now, that space is not clear and homogeneous, but rather
behind all the masterpieces there lay a simple vaporous and activated. It is particularly
progression, the pi ogression from the cobbled activated in the centre, where it forms a haze
street to the smooth flanks of building. It would moving into and around objects, immersing and
be ridiculous to pretend that my fuzzy paintings veiling them, pulsing in sensations of absorbtion
of bottles, olive trees and nudes, dim as blotting and disclosure.
paper, project an armature of the architectural What is immediately clear from these works
effects that mean everything to me, that seem is that they determinedly refuse an easy
to me to express everything, all shades of the seduction of tonal painting, which is to allow
relationships in which our feelings are involved. the tonal progression to proliferate for the sake
But I have to confess that my interest as a of picture-making. The results of this tendency
painter — only as a painter, mind you, not as a will seem without urgency, contrived and
spectator — is in an interpretation of volume that factitious in their integration. From these
is without menace in slow and flattened paintings one can adduce that the artist was at
progression as of the lowest relief, in which any once contractedly absorbed and yet
section is as prominent or important, or is as responsively alert whilst making them. The
little so, as any other section. I am interested in a resolution they contain is hard-won and yet open
status of mutual recognition, as it were, between to successive discovery.
objects and their spaces wherein there is nothing Stokes's painting reveals an imagination at
monumental, no movement, no rigidity, no once strongly interrogative but which accepts
flourish, no acuteness, no pointedness, no the spontaneous and subtle movements in
drama. What's left ? It seems a fluidity, but this perception. For him, sensation was a unit of
too I find anathema, I mean for me. I fully experience linked to affectivity. And so, during
admire all these qualities, but in the act of the act of perception, the painter organizes his
painting I don't aspire to them. responses which attain awareness as thematically
With a few smudges or lines on an otherwise regulative for the whole. Perceptions of growth,
blank canvas, abstract artists have well shown of dissolvement, of embellishment, reciprocally
how far, how very far, a few marks will go. I contend and determine each other. As this
rate that as a gesture, an intrusion, if you like, process takes place, moments of local tension, of
that is perfectly justified. anxiety either tacit or overt, are felt as intrinsic
It is I who must justify, if I can, a lack of to the fugitive state of the single entities within
gesture in what I want to do. The result, if it is the painting. We are compelled to acknowledge
true to the aim is almost bound to be modest, the interdependency of object with object,
at least in drama. q through the complementary urge, focused
throughout these paintings, towards an
(This note by Adrian Stokes, previously unpublished,
was written in 1968.) affirming integration and oneness.q
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