Page 32 - Studio International - July August 1973

The work of Robert Young

Cord 1970. Acrylic on board, 22 X 48 in.
The potent image of the car, The Automobile is an archetype whose form is so powerful that it conveys aggression, as if it were a painting of a live object, perhaps a shark.
As it is only a car the mystery of the painting lies in its ability to suggest a dramatic situation, perhaps in a dream, or in the dark outside an unseen house, yet it is a
portrait of one of America's most famous motor cars.

The swing from abstraction towards realism was revitalized in England by David Hockney. painting of Robert Young is worthwhile as it
one of the most interesting developments in One of the most important realistic painters illustrates the significance of realism to a high
painting during the sixties. Abstraction for its is Robert Young, whose painting in oils, degree. The paintings illustrate how an artist
own sake is dying, not because contemporary gouache, acrylics or water-colours has a highly can draw upon various contemporary and
realists have chosen to ignore formal individual approach. Young was born in historical influences, while creating something
achievements, but the world is full of shapes, Vancouver in 1938, studied art history at the very much his own. In his painting Young
shadows and forms, from the fantastic to the University of British Columbia, and came to selects images which are visually arresting in
everyday, objects which are hard to ignore, London to study etching and engraving at the themselves. These images are often discovered
and which inspire everything from posters City and Guilds School of Art from 1962 to unexpectedly in newspapers or magazines. They
to Pop Art. Even the Mona Lisa has become an 1964. After a further period in Canada studying have elicited an immediate response and are
`object' in pop terms, and taste in the etching and lithography at the Vancouver selected and presented in an emotive and concise
appreciation of historical painting has swung School of Art from 1964 to 1966, he returned to form, both still and exciting to the observer.
from Giotto to the PreRaphaelites, while live and work in London, and has exhibited in In the collection and presentation of his realistic
Victorian 'conversation pieces' have become as various exhibitions including a one-man show images, Robert Young achieves a potency which
interesting to contemporary eyes as the at the Redfern Gallery in 1971. can be interpreted by the observer according to
impressionists. The combination of an education in art his own sensibility. The subtle use of colour and
Realism was not abandoned in America to the history with training in drawing and the balanced composition is pleasing to the eye, yet
extent it was in England. The tradition was various printing techniques, as well as living in has the emotive ability to register in the
carried on in the United States by such artists two such different countries, has obviously had stomach as well as the mind. The images, of
as Eakins, Hopper and Wyeth, while it has been its effect. To examine the meticulous and fine easily recognized subjects, have a paradoxical
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