Page 52 - Studio International - October1973

The prints are very definite, plain, and explicit force of Walker's art lies in its
specific : there is no technical polarization of elements; and this
mystique, no fussiness. The attack is polarity finds its most intense context
solid and affirmative. in the paintings. The chalk drawings
and the lithographs— representing, as
they do, gains in other domains —
shrug off this concern for separateness
but the screen prints, on the other
hand, exemplify it. The core of
Walker's art, finally, and the source of
its polarity of elements, is to be found
in his love-hate relationship with
representation. In his earlier work the
representational mode is clearly
commemorated : but in the later, more
significant work it is perversely
sabotaged. In the best paintings,
traditional devices are acknowledged,
accommodated, established, in fact,
on a firm footing — and then torn Joe Goode reminded of the desperateness of the
apart. Walker's prowess with colour, Untitled drawing 1973 act of making art, while with Goode
his finely-honed drawing skill, urge the making of pictures seems as easy
him — not to assimilate elements — but colours were set against the and regular as breathing.
to prise their relations apart, to sever equivalent pale tones in black and Catherine Lampert
their connections, and to cast their white. His careful blotting caught
John Walker
conventional stability in doubt. The individual particles of the chalk in the
Screenprint 1973 no. 3
polarity is thereby pronounced : he paper fibres so that the materiality of Ad Reinhardt at the Grand Palais,
replaces concinnity with friction ; the medium and its tenuous adherence Paris, May 1973
The Blackboards lithographs are harmony with disjunction : the to the paper possessed a dramatic The Ad Reinhardt retrospective
predominantly interacting surfaces : 'soreness' of disrupted expectation. freshness not possible with spray recently touring Europe came to
accumulated washes in semi- And this would seem to be the radical painting. In a few of the drawings Paris in May. There were fifty-seven
transparent monochrome, again in twist in Walker's art— an important grains of cadmium yellow and faint works at the Grand Palais — less
grisaille. This attention to surface aspect of its powerful holding turquoise coexisted in the same space than half the number shown seven
opacity and its consequences, quality. like the divisionist dots of colour years ago at the Jewish Museum in
exhibited previously in the large R. J. Rees lithography. New York. Inevitably, there were
chalk drawings, is fairly new for some conspicuous omissions; but
Walker. His characteristic treatment Along the jagged course prescribed the show was concise and clear, and
of surface has been to flaunt and Joe Goode Drawings at the by the tape there occurred denser the important phases of the artist's
exaggerate its illusionistic potential ; Felicity Samuel Gallery, London, from accumulations of coloured dust. The career were carefully represented.
the dominant forms in his earlier 3 September to 5 October artist had apparently blown, or Reinhardt died in 1967. The earliest
paintings are invariably descriptive, There are times when an artist's work almost lifted the colour on to the work in the exhibition stemmed from
traditionally modelled, and set or is clearly suffering from the context of adjoining area. Where this edging was the late 30s. A painting from 1940,
portrayed in a container-like space. a one-man exhibition. To ensure along the periphery, foreground and influenced by Stuart Davis and
Walker's paintings, like those of maximum enjoyment I wished I background were distinguished in a Carl Holty, has a flattened cubistic
Jasper Johns, are infilled with could have borrowed a triplet of Joe manner analogous to the view of the design set within a blunted oval,
'homeless representation'. The chalk Goode's latest pastels in order to have earth's atmosphere from the frame of painted in clear, bright pastel colours.
murals conspicuously break with this isolated them from their identically an aeroplane window. Which was The non-objectivity of the work is
space : their ubiquitous powdery sized mates on the gallery 'shelf'. clearly the artist's intention. aggressively displayed, like a badge,
inflexion and semi-opacious surfaces Each of the twenty small drawings and the painting is polemical in
resist the tendency to build-up (approximately 16 x 24 in.) consisted In the drawings containing Goode's spirit. The subsequent work into the
traditional figuration. In the of a central portion of delicately favourite cloud masses, the clouds 40s is less assured. A 1948 painting
Blackboards Walker takes advantage gradated rainbow shades surrounded had a painterly formlessness quite depicts an all-over, calligraphic
of this recognition, and the lithographs by overlaid areas of a more even different from the drawings of a year design with a pronounced Klee-
accordingly eschew discrete shaping texture. In fact the surface was ago which affected the sharpened Tobey influence : the composition is
to focus solely on diversification of continuous; the illusion of collaged contrasts and perspective of aerial stilted and muddy. A large painting
surface. The diversity ranges from the layers having been produced by the photography. Occasionally the new from the same year has a uniform
washes and smears generated by a torn masking tape which originally shapes suggested landscape by way pattern of interlocking hard-edged
blackboard eraser, through the partitioned off the cut-out of torn mountainous diagonals and rectangles in near primary colours :
contours of supplely brushed 'background' area. small billowy clouds placed at the scale is inflated and finally
configuration, to proliferate further horizon level. In a pure grey drawing incommensurate with the over-
with splashes and scribbles, When an artist embarks on such an of the latter variety the swirling complex, rather fussy design.
calligraphic flourishes, and stamped exercise in composing randomly decorative forms were described in a Reinhardt's invention was initially
impressions of the oval eraser. torn paper strips in units of two to fine-grained texture reminiscent of hesitant and indecisive; and he
Invariably, one surface will undertow five, we feel he is rehearsing his nineteenth-century engraving. moved simultaneously through a
another : its figuration eddying technique for a grander, more variety of styles with varying degrees
gracefully and countering the rival shattering final product. In this case, Joe Goode seems to be a very of success. A 1949 painting depicts
current. Walker's touch is always sure, the intention behind Goode's pretty thoughtful, self-willed artist. When he a quilted pattern of semi-opaque
never missing. The prints are drawings was unclear. The returns to painting'he will no doubt brushstrokes in an optically
remarkably uncluttered, are very open compositions were gratuitous, or mute the fairy-tale colours of the reverberant all-over design : the
and light. indeed boring, whereas the pastels and replace the chance traditional cubist problem of how to
application of the colour was arrangement of rough-edged segments organize numerous small parts is
The bifurcation in Walker's recent brilliant. Better than any other artist, by acuter visual calculation. The conspicuous, and the painting is
primary work is clearly divulged in Goode has found a way to represent corner of one drawing had been torn crowded and unresolved. But this was
this show. The prints neatly shed the atmosphere of high altitudes by off revealing the white inside of the a time of purging — a period of
light on the pictorial debate between minute dots of hand-painted colour. paper, and hence the paradoxical painting through and getting rid of
the paintings and the large drawings. thickness of two-dimensions. Last extraneous elements. The densely
The lithographs, in implication, are From a distance the fragile pastel summer a young English artist, cluttered built-up calligraphic mode
obviously more sophisticated than medium appeared to have floated Richard Wentworth, showed a series gradually gave way to a more open
the screen prints; yet puzzlingly, the on to the page with only the odd of mixed media works in which glass, and expansive linear style — which
latter have the edge in presence. This slurring touch caused by moving the paper, chipboard and frame were also resulted in some fine painting — but
refers back to the major work. The tissue paper. The glowing sunrise ripped diagonally. With him one was which in turn was also discarded ; and
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