Page 54 - Studio International - October1973

advantage inside. They could use the colour and touch. Getting unfudged For example, in the same day one
confines of a room to work against, should be his first priority. The grids could attend the Yugoslav artists
and I suspect their energies are a have to be thrown out : they're really action which at one point consisted
little dissipated in this setting. The jejune now— 60s cliches; art students of the cruelly absurd extraction of
earliest things look somewhat use them all the time. The whorls are goldfish from water in order to time
flimsy, having unhelpful connotations okay as such, but they should be their points of expiration, a lecture
of objects like deckchairs ; precarious broad and expansive, or continuous: on 'The Quest for the Archetype'
and impermanent, as if they could be they rarely work, discretely applied, in presented by Jeff Poklen from
folded up and stacked away at the a confined or limited space—the Canada, the lyrical landscape film
end of the day. portrait in Pollock's Portrait and a Timecheck by David Hall, or an event
Dream is a brilliant exception. by London's Tim Jones, one of the
The best thing about Foster's work is Edwards has to completely revise his more active of the young conceptual
its inventiveness. You can see it most ideas about scale. He has to shape up artists present.
clearly in his Spring, Frame III, and or ship out. His painting is similar to a
particularly in his two recent pieces, lot of work around now in this The walls of the Demarco Gallery,
Slab Sculptures lI Et M. These tack country. And that's an indictment. 8 Melville Crescent, headquarters
about unpredictably, and unlike the R. J. Rees for the pandemonium, seemed to
others which have a rather heave out those notable fallacious
diagrammatic quality, one can only words of Marshall McCluhan,
take them in by walking all round Visual arts at the Edinburgh 'Art is anything you can get away
them. Steel and concrete are played Festival. Edinburgh Arts '73, with'.
off against one another in a tough and Objects USA, Earth Images,
punchy way; for instance, concrete is Permanence de PArt Francaise, The organization appeared devoid of
deployed as paving slabs, effectively August/September. order. The combination of
stacked together. The strategy of Edinburgh Arts '73 democracy and disorder resulted at
Judy Marie was, ostensibly, to infiltrate the first in a confused blur that temporarily
Celtic skies with twinkling cultural clogged one's senses. Many
John Edwards at the Rowan luminaries and by using super stars participants were forced to amplify
Gallery, London, 31 August — 27 from the art world, form a six week their statements causing a perversion
September. world of art. of their natural, often modest form.
John Edwards's paintings at the This prospect was met by most with Edinburgh '73 reflected the exciting
Rowan gallery are mostly thin a guarded euphoria. Not only did but indiscriminate and arbitrary
vertical panels of variegated, Richard Demarco, wizard of this accumulation of Kassel '72.
dissonant colour. Each painting is embryonic microcosm, promise the
similar in design : whorls, grids, and involvement of important artists, but Of the best known advertised
splotches — usually in vertical also an assemblage of lectures to be artists, Joseph Beuys and Tadeusz
sequence, inset to the framing edge. given by renowned experts in Kantor materialized. Kantor
The paint is invariably palette-knifed diversified concerns, exhibitions by orchestrated his Cricot Theatre
and scumbled — occasionally prominent artists from France, Company to the text of
engraved ; or at times is impressed, Austria, Canada, Yugoslavia, Poland Witkiewicz's 1922 play, 'Lovelies
it would seem, from a painted transfer. and America and a school with a and Dowdies'. The Forest Hill
Rustic Whirl is typically scaled — cosmopolitan student populus which Theatre, a medieval poorhouse,
around 8 x 2 feet — and has a ground would participate in an accredited became resplendent with brilliant
of medium green overwashed with educational system that was to offer visual imagery, surrealist illusion,
orange and yellow. The primary at last a viable alternative to the Boschian fantasies and carefully
design is then superimposed : a loose constrictions of academia. timed, flowing, repeating and
diagonal grid of gray-mauve simultaneous forms. Like Artaud,
occupying the top third of the What was not made clear at the Kantor searches for the implementation
canvas; a purple and brown-red John Edwards Mono-Green 1973 inception, but which became of maximal destruction of theatrical
whorl in the middle; and, in the lower Acrylic on canvas, 100x 28in immediately evident, was that the illusion.
third, a grid similar to the one above dominant aesthetic viewpoint of
but with pink splotches attached— obliterated bright green whorl. Edinburgh Arts '73 was one which In contrast to the bizarre collection
rosebuds on the trellis. The colour is Everything finally cancels out, is consisted of no viewpoint at all. of Polish actors — a nymphomaniac
mismatched and overwrought; the redundant, is glutted, and the Demarco, it turned out, was Princess Sophia of Abcerage ;
paint is pulled around without confusion argues against the mess. democratic about art. In his Oz, Bestia Domestica who, dressed in
apparently much thought. Bar, The scale of each painting is there exist no distinctions, no value surgeon's white intently scrubs a
identically scaled, has a top third incommensurate with the design — judgements, no standards. Everything
composed of diagonal strokes in painfully so. The grids and numerous is reduced to a single, levelling
indigo mingling with magentas and interwoven forms are pretty arbitrary, stratum, a hazardous equilibrium in Lovelies and Dowdies
mauves; the middle has 'rosebuds' of indiscriminate in application, and which there is no high or low. Photo : Martin Bell
strident pink ; the lower third has indifferently applied. Everything
some formless acid greens and olives; is fudged and senseless. Edwards
and a diagonal grid appears in parts. should use oil paint or, at least,
The surfaces appear to be flayed and better acrylic — not that cheap art
furious : but are really scroungy and school stuff; oil might be better for
debilitated. Edwards's colour is his purposes to mix and manoeuvre
simplistic : mostly complementaries— on the surface. His surfaces never
just clashing and getting frenetic. His interact : they're simply added ; and
ideas seem thrice-removed from their the atmosphere is stiff and
sources ; and the sources are meagre embarrassed, like a doctor's waiting
in the first place. The paintings are a room. He should get more sceptical
little disingenuous : like much about his means : the inherited
British art they are essentially assumptions he works with are not
reproductions or illustrations of credible anymore ; the a priori
aesthetic phenomena — never the real decisions have to go — he has to work
thing. Bright Bite has a lurid pink and more intuitively with the painting : in
tan whorl at the top; diagonal streaks less of a programmed fashion. The
of mauve, cerulean, flesh pink, and colour is a real problem : it's so
tan move from the middle to the base; terrible. For a start, given his possible
and the lower third has some pale gray- interests, Edwards should look at
green ellipses overlapping a partially Gottlieb and learn something about
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