Page 54 - Studio International - December 1973

What will such people make of factor, one is never allowed to lose paintings, and the fringes of trickly painters. In recent years, with the
Hoyland's show ? Much the same as sight of the area as image. However colour that hang along the lower increasing focusing of interest on the
they did of the last Caro show at the large, colour areas retain their edges often read as irritating automatic surrealist art of Miró,
old Kasmin's, because there are, I identity as contained shapes. mannerisms. Hoyland's enormous Matta and Gorky, this kind of painting
think, certain similarities. By his own Physicality is matched by an equally facility can wind up as facile. has tended to fall into a certain
My remaining reservation is of those neglect. Even André Breton, as long
paintings that have mini-rectangles ago as the 1941 edition of
echoing the main shape, either Surrealism and Painting, referred to it
superimposed on it or adjacent to it. as 'an ultraretrograde technique
Their function is to suggest yet (return to Meissonier)'. True, he was
another possible picture plane, referring specifically to Dali, but Dali
pinning no.1 back down to the surface. was only the most extreme exponent
They are an over-literal exposition of of the De Chirico manner. In fact, of
the main thesis and have unfortunate course, academic illusionism was an
connotations of being 'son of'. It was entirely appropriate, highly effective
good to see that most of these works means for the surrealist painters to

John Hoyland 4.6.73 1973 Conroy Maddox Beck and Call 1953

standards, Caro's show was insistent illusionism, and this can be were the earliest things in the show adopt since it admirably fulfils one of
unspectacular, contained, quietly made to work as well in paintings and that the recent ones were free the most important conditions of
distinctive. All these things go for the only one foot square as in works that from this somewhat laboured and surrealist art—that it should be
Hoylands. In addition, there was a are ten times or more that size. It gives narrative quality. 'unaesthetic' (see the first Manifesto
distinctly turn-of-the-century cubist Hoyland an opportunity for flexibility Hoyland's previous paintings gave of Surrealism). Also, since the
feel in the Caros. This is echoed in that he exercises in this show, with off the feeling that he was still mining original function of this style was
Hoyland's paintings by a frankly typically uneven results. The two for the raw material of his art. Now he faithfully to render the familiar
European belle-peinture quality. The smallest paintings avoid the danger of seems to be consolidating those world of the Victorian middle class,
handling of matter envokes De Stael looking fey, while a few of the largest discoveries in paintings that have presenting them with a reassuring
rather than Hofmann or Olitski. works seem rather overblown. To greater refinement, and more image of their material surroundings
Many who initially baulked at my mind, the best thing here is that glamour than grit. This would be a putting it to the purpose of depicting
Caro's stuff, thinking it rather tame, hung in a hard-to-see position in the good point fora large-scale the alternative (and highly
later approved. I suspect something narrow neck of the gallery, and is an retrospective of the best of his work disturbing) reality of the
similar could happen to Hoyland here. in-between size (72 x 66 in.). It would to date. unconscious mind clearly also fulfils
All this said, however, Hoyland be good to see these small and mid- Judy Marie another condition of surrealist
basically continues to hew away at size paintings along with John art —that it should be subversive.
the pivotal proposition of just about all Walker's of similar proportions. Conroy Maddox at the Hamet The eleven oil paintings in this
his work to date ; the resolution of The colour is a few registers Gallery 16 November — 8 December exhibition are not only classic in their
contradictory values and modes of removed from the American cool that A relative latecomer to Surrealism, execution (which, incidentally, is not
painting within the one work. In doing set the tone for Hoyland's last show Conroy Maddox first met and as deadpan as all that—there is a lot of
so, he continues to carry on an a year ago. It's now more mellow and worked with the French surrealists in quiet pleasure to be derived from
intelligent dialogue between sonorous. He makes effective use of Paris in 1937. He returned to London Maddox's delicately sensuous
mainstream American painting and glazing over the large colour areas in 1938 but remained in close surfaces and often lyrical colour) but
those properties lumped together that are established with opaque paint contact with Paris until in 1940 he in them the artist also pursues and
under the generic term of 'European swiftly knifed on to the canvas. The joined the English Surrealist Group. elaborates a number of classic
tradition'. Not every work is a component colours can be dimly From the beginning he was one of surrealist themes, the most important
resounding success. There are some sensed, but they appear fused into those who refused to accept the of which is that of the mystery of
in which he has failed to avoid the one dominant, if elusive hue that dilution and distortion of Surrealism space : what Salvador Dali, in a
traps that he springs for himself. dissolves surface into indefinite depth. implicit in Herbert Read's notion lecture delivered at MOMA, in 1934,
Fora start, take the question of The skin of these central figures is that the romantic/visionary tradition referred to as 'the physical notion of
what size the paintings need to be. slightly ridged and puckered ; in the in English painting could be identified the enigma of space' stating it to be
It's hard to talk about 'need', because margins paint seems squeezed out with it and today, one of the last one of 'the great vital constants' of
two such separate modes of using from behind like cosmic toothpaste, surviving English surrealists, human experience. And Giorgio de
form and colour are in operation that piled up in chewy ribbons of clear Conroy Maddox remains true not only Chirico defined it (with greater
it could go either way. The pictures sharp colour, each separate and to Surrealism as an ideology but, and poetic force) as 'the nostalgia of the
take up their stance in some neutral distinct. Colour and texture and very much to the point in the context infinite'. This nostalgia is strongly
territory between large-scale 'field' gesture are always elegantly matched, of his new exhibition at the Hamet evoked in most of the paintings but
painting and easel painting. There are but at times the mastery seems glib Gallery, also to the deadpan two of them La Gare de St Rambert
big areas of colour, but, although put and the marks gratuitous. In illusionistic style of painting that the and Winchester Walk, SE1 are
across in a very solid and physical way particular, the artfully artless blobs of Surrealists inherited via De Chirico particularly intense and disturbing in
that uses sheer spread as a powerful paint that are scattered over certain from the nineteenth-century genre effect since both depict existing, not

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