Page 64 - Studio International - May 1973

Art information

their spaces and at harmony with their both the essence of the object and those Colin Self, who is represented in this
environment. Legs extend to become shafts particular parts which give it significance. exhibition both by his eccentric and clever 1964
of a tunnel, at the same time the legs are pressed What makes Bomberg's work epic is Cinema series and by much harder to stomach
upon by the shafts. In these early works - the something more than his ability to depict the recent versions of Guard Dog on Missile Base '67
studies for Sappers, the 144 drawings of 1919, essential in structure and details or to paint both and numerous aberrant gardens. Clearly he
the lithographs for the Russian Ballet of the the tension and the harmony of a scene: it is the parodies erotic realists such as Ramos, Bellmer
same year, and the various drawings of method itself by which he gets these qualities and Peter Phillips, but his visual aggression
wrestlers and dancers of the same period - there in the paintings. This confrontation seems to overwhelms the satirical content.
is a humanist element which distinguishes have involved some kind of wrestle between Similarly, Clive Barker's chrome-plated
Bomberg's work from that of his contemporaries himself and what he paints, to get through the objects were worthy of the scene in their time,
and which reappears in his later, so-called surface to the heart of the object, and once there, being both ironic and belovedly artificial.
`expressionist' work. Unlike the works of other to see out and around the object. In this way, Unfortunately the follow-up drawings such as
futurist/cubist artists of this period, Bomberg his work is almost three-dimensional; it is both Boots for Rio-Marlon Brando No. I'69 lack the
is not content to simply analyse the structure of alive and the monument to life, the result of distinguishing craftsmanship of the objects.
the depicted groups caught within an airless Bomberg's extraordinary journey from the Possibly within the more modest environment
space. For him the structures do not lose their knowing to the telling. q of the studio one could appreciate Barker's
historic origins : they remain pictures of people. JANET HOBHOUSE strong points; for example, his way of
There is nothing facile about Bomberg's depositing the ink medium to suggest the
work, nothing that is simply ornamental in the rippled light patterns of chrome and the
BRITISH COUNCIL 'DRAWINGS EXHIBITION,
beautiful paintings that he made. This is as true vanishing outlines of brightly lit objects.
BADEN-BADEN 1973', APRIL
of his flower studies and landscapes of the 4os The catalogue introduction contains a
and 5os as it is of his later portraits. A While as yet few practitioners would appreciate sympathetic overview of the personal function
characteristic gutsiness takes him beyond the being labelled draughtsmen, it appears that this of drawing in the life of the artist which one
surface qualities of the subject to the real year drawing in Britain may finally win was able to sense in Barker, but could not be
substance of the thing, to the forms which artistic approbation and indeed money with the convinced of in David Tremlett's nonchalantly
control and create the picture. In works such as forthcoming Teesside Biennale. While the (no, hastily) drawn sketches, one for each of the
Bideford, Devon - the Meeting of the Tor and the British Council's 'Drawings Exhibition, counties of England and Wales. The art work
Tay of 1946, or The Last Self-Portrait of Baden-Baden 1973' was both timely and was sub-standard and did not do his reputation
1956-57, he uses a few key strokes to create a commendable, how disappointing it was that their as an innovative project-maker much justice.
very complex image. He goes straight to the selection was heavily weighted to already known The artists in the later half of this
essence of such subjects, with an acuteness of work of the Pop generation, along with their exhibition have been concerned with
vision which runs throughout his work, and less-than-innovative recent drawing. With so analytical exploration, specifically into the
which he developed as part of the earlier little attempt to spotlight new or unrewarded post-cubist issue of the grid. With careful
Vorticist method of seeing and breaking down talent one realizes that the draughtsmen must good taste, for example, Michael Craig-Martin
the surface impression. Characteristic of most themselves come out of the closet. limited his investigation to Drawings for
of Bomberg's work is a sense of the rightness In the catalogue introduction Tim Hilton Proposed Constructions, all done on a nearly-
of his approach. He senses a way into the true pointed out that drawing has not played an isometric type of graph paper. These
centre of a work and deals with that alone : it independent role in 'the constantly developing obliquely positioned boxes and lids are in one
seems that what he has found is above all right, historiography of modern art.' A brief way jaunty and picturesque, due to the detailed
like a mathematical solution is right. exception was the endorsement of mass- notation of the hinges and wood grain, and yet
He never gives way to trickiness or produced graphic imagery in the Pop era, more importantly contribute to the deductive
painterliness, to any sort of compromise with largely because it signified a cultural break from minimal line without the cumbersome bother
what he knew to be the true direction of the the metaphysical side of Abstract Expressionism. of the sculpture itself.
work. In his Cyprus and Spain landscapes of David Hockney, in the course of his academic During the last year Rita Donagh's public
the late 4os, as in the Bomb Store studies of training, went from admiration for the fathers following has justifiably expanded; and thus it
1942, he seems to have located the compulsion of modernism to a point where 'I didn't care seems a shame that her English admirers will
of the objects : in futurist terms 'the lines of that much about the bigger ideas of art.' not see the incipient Warhol series of 1965-67.
force' of a grouping or landscape, in his own From this exhibition one could theorize that in These paper collages integrate the 1960's
terms the 'sense of the mass'. Bomberg goes so many ways Hockney's example, both his real- celebration of urban culture with a neo-dada
far into the structure of the work and depicts life involvement with his subjects and his consideration of chance and the nature of
it with such economy that his painting seems stylistic trademarks, such as thefaux-naif mode, perception. When seen in a body, as in this
in some way the achievement of a mystical have had a disastrous influence on lesser exhibition, Rita Donagh's work compares to
confrontation. For this reason what he makes artists. Hockney's best drawings continue to that of Eva Hesse by way of their similar serial
seems, simply, true, and the result of a very rise above these hackneyed beginnings if only development and rigorously defined symbolism
very special imaginative gift. D. H. Lawrence's because the detailed area, whether it be a Sony intended to express personal experience.
remarks on Cezanne, quoted in the catalogue TV or Celia's blush, is sensually and Specifically one is reminded of Hesse's layers of
to this exhibition, seem a clear description of physically conveyed by a solid use of line and latex and fibreglass in Contingent (1969) and the
this gift: Bomberg's architectural sense is tone. On the other hand, a natural outsider, free-hanging rope skeins of Vinculum II (1969),
matched, especially in his flower paintings and Barry Flanagan, eschewed autobiographical which are analogous to Donagh's pressed and
landscapes (Flowers and Summer Flowers, 1947, incident in order to concentrate on the rubbed tissue papers and meandering string-like
for example), by his knowledge of colour. With swashbuckling humour of his naive felt-tip line line.
it, almost in the Surrealist manner, he was able and the viewer's enjoyment of the well-done pun. As much as the British Council exhibition
to pick out the individual life of whatever he The extreme consequence of a self- was sometimes frustrating due to certain
chose to paint. With colour he demonstrates indulgent path can be seen in the work of artists' lack of mature development, it was also

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