Page 51 - Studio International - November 1973

good story. It is only with the sculptural inventiveness of his work
peculiarly British breed of literary has sometimes been less noticed.
romantic painter that the background
notes are as much part of their art as In the 'Pandarus' series, solid chunky
any painted mark, and as essential to pieces with strange funnel-like
the success of the works as the extensions and in pieces like Diarchy
gallery walls which support the the elusive and 'artless' quality to
pictures. The appeal is there while which I have referred is not in
you are listening to stencilled evidence. These pieces are hieratic
ecstatic groans of 'oh those reds, and menacing, as grave and solid as
Egyptian sculpture and it is here in
those greens, those blues, those
yellows we used to use in the late the work of this middle period that
sixties and early seventies. My Armitage most cleverly reveals that,
boy, you should have seen them ...'. as he says, 'the first-stage conscious
Phillips plays safe (unlike Kitaj) by reason for its existence' is 'a formal
laughing softly at himself, self- sculptural idea.'
consciously exposing the flimsiness
of the whole deal. A Little What of the most recent work, which
Retrospective, Fifty Recapitulatory Armitage himself refers to as being
Paintings, a series of 8 x 6in. tentative or incomplete ? It is true
expletives hanging as one work, is that some of the pieces are
Phillips looking at himself and inconclusive and it appears to have
finding himself doing rather strange been the result of Armitage's
things. A Pseudo Cubist Painting, a disenchantment with what he calls
provincial art-school Life Painting, an 'sophisticated art-marketing' : he
Abstract Painting based on Golden feels, as do many artists, that the
Kenneth Armitage Friends Walking 1952 Bronze, h. 22 in. concluded and finite piece becomes
Section, Eleven Terminal Greys, a
beautiful one, and forty-six others. another hostage to the art-commodity
This little show within the show Kenneth Armitage, a travelling world. These premonitions are
'includes all types of work done in the exhibition organized by the Arts honourable but I'm not sure that they
last ten years, good, bad and quality Council of Great Britain, at Ferens Art are very important in the long run.
unknown. The very bad ones were Gallery, Hull, 7 -28 October.
very difficult to do.' Such self- Recently, after reading an ecstatic The fact remains that Armitage is a
deprecating modesty from the jack- review, I bought an expensive book form maker and a sculptor of rare
of -all-trades. The Phillips colour only to find it tedious, tendentious and ability and great integrity : it is a
charts or farbenverzeichnis(s) feature badly written. Subsequently I destiny which he cannot escape.
regularly in this chronological parade, discovered, to my irritation, that the Hubert Dalwood
together with the other tip-to-be- review was by a dear friend and
noted : stencil-work, especially in a drinking companion of the writer.
tasty grey, brightening up the This taking in of literary washing may
slightest of images. An example : MA be hallowed by time and tradition Milton Avery at the
VLAST 4B. AT & ABOUT THIS but to me it seems at the very least Waddington Galleries 1, London,
SCULPTURE JOHN TILE, in stencil, annoying even when it is not (as it 18 September —13 October.
makes complete sense of the piano often is) downright improper. To Rothko thought highly of Avery, and
keyboard image. I wonder how John avoid impropriety on this score it gives has spoken warmly of how
Russell, in his catalogue introduction, me pleasure to declare my interest : important he was to New York
manages to style his artist as a Kenneth Armitage taught me when I painters back in those legendary
quintessentialist. was a student in the halycon early years of the thirties and forties.
days at Bath Academy of Art and has Kenneth Armitage (left to right) Looking round Avery's present show
The fifty small paintings bear witness remained a friend ever since. Big Doll 1969, Table H (with flat at Waddington's, it's hard to imagine
to Phillips's struggle to find the key arms) 1971, Table H (with round this work in that context. He offers
to Phillips's popular appeal. After all, The first sculpture of Armitage's that I arms) 1971 views, all easel-picture size, of clumps
he is battling against Whitley Bay, saw was a stone carving of a head and of cows and hills, gulls and beaches,
Barnes Common and drawers full of arms that he worked on (and never, I pathos are just around the corner. But chairs and the people sitting in them.
Armitage's work, particularly the These things do not seem to have
postcards not yet claimed as art, in think, completed) in the sculpture
spite of Angela Flowers. school at Bath. This was in 1946 and early work and his most recent pieces been seized on simply as pretexts for
the piece displayed his life-long love are round another corner. Round this some grand aesthetic plan and
Phillips's 1973 response to the Berlin of Egyptian and Cycladic sculpture, corner people and things and odd although forms are schematized they
Wall is a painting which sees the an interest that could be detected in circumstances are examined with are never generalized. It's always a
division in terms of eight fragments of several of the sculptures in the Arts curiosity and affection. It is an out-of- particular place or incident that seems
wall set in the middle of frames of Council Exhibition, notably in school world, so lessons about art are to have triggered off the painting.
grass and sky, just like the English Diarchy 1957, Both Arms 1969, and being taught round here. One imagines Avery pottering round
Grass under English Skies series. in the shape of the head of pieces like the landscapes that he celebrates in
Again it is pleasant to look at but the Big Doll also made in 1969. This welcome freedom from his work while all around was
effect is that of a jest made just at the didacticism has perhaps in Armitage's exploding into splinters of doubt and
wrong moment. Perhaps the next The exhibition consisted mainly of case sometimes obscured the solid angst and heavy breathing.
series will be Ireland in terms of peat recent works with some earlier pieces. sculptural qualities of his work. In a
bogs and shamrock. Perhaps inevitably it is the earliest statement in the exhibition catalogue, Looking at these pictures presents no
pieces that are the most familiar and I Armitage says 'Each work of mine has problems, and one is made to feel
Phillips is gifted in many areas. suspect the most affectionately I hope, a formal or sculptural idea that the making of them didn't
Poetry, music, philosophy, patience remembered. This is inevitable which, however simple, is the first- either. The basic elements of each
(those dots must take a long time), because it was with sculptures like stage conscious reason for its work are fixed before the canvas has
painting too. Russell talks of the Friends Walking 1952 and Figure existence. But intimately linked with been touched: and are laid down with
makers of memorable images Lying on its side 1959 that Armitage this is something else which I find the minimum of second thoughts or
counting as artists. If this is the established his reputation. They have hard to define (nor do I want to), an shifting around. One key shape calls
criterion, Phillips doesn't count. One an assurance, an immediacy and an instinctive concern with a human the tune for the whole painting, either
leaves the gallery remembering a insouciance which makes them both condition or attitude either trivial, being left on its own or generating
particular kind of colour, a cultured accessible and appealing. serious, ambiguous or obvious !' others that rhyme with it. The lack of
curiosity, a superficial appeal and Perhaps it is just because Armitage's fuss is apparent in the actual
little else. A good deal of sculpture takes 'concern with a human condition' is scaffolding of the work ; there's a
Tony Rothon itself so seriously that pomposity and apparent that the extraordinary near-total absence of Hoffmanesque
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