Page 44 - Studio International - September 1973

Malcolm Hughes
(Left)
2 unit relief/painting 1973
(Below)
Four 2 unit relief/paintings 1973
Studio La Cita, Verona

spatial angst that arises with the internal corner. to emphasize their disparity. However much it systems of artificial signs. Elements in shallow
It is none the less closely concerned with the may be valid, and useful, to assess works of the relief, which offer variations in light and shade
`concreteness' of the inner space, which is not a classic and the modern phases in terms of the but no chromatic nuances, are placed beside
matter of geometrical opposition between same semiological categories, it is important to elements that are constituted from overlapping
inside and outside but of what Bachelard calls bear in mind what, precisely, differentiates bands of colour. It is worth considering the
the 'intimate immensity' achieved by them. And this can be expressed, it would seem, `open book' of Malcolm Hughes's contrasting
contemplation. The effect of the four white most succinctly in the fact that the classic period `pages' in just those terms in which we have
panels in relief, which seem to encircle the succeeded that of the 'reality beneath' the sign considered the juxtaposed pages of The Complete
spectator in the sense that he is drawn by structure (Renaissance), whereas the modern Angler and A Chronicle of Golden Friars. For it
recurrent patterns from one to another, is to period succeeds that of the 'reality beyond' is clear that the twinned elements do not form
induce just such a contemplative indwelling, so (Realism). The prime characteristic of the part of a 'classic' and harmonious sign structure.
that the space becomes a room, and more than classic phase is the unity of discourse : artificial Yet at the same time we have no means of
that, a room that is lived in. and natural signs are woven into a single web. assessing the comparative status of the painting
In the modern phase, however, discourse and the relief in relation to a model of
III remains fragmented. There is no longer the `Realism'. The oscillation is maintained,
It remains for me to draw certain tentative nineteenth-century gradation of levels from the therefore, as a kind of exposition of the critical
conclusions which arise from the material of the artificial sign, through the natural sign, to the dilemma, perhaps as an implicit comment on the
two preceding sections. We have been unattainable 'reality beyond'. But the natural status of the relief in the modern constructive
concerned, however summarily, with three sign is (at least very commonly) suppressed and tradition. That notable theoretician of the
successive historical phases, each of which the artificial sign takes on what might be called a constructive movement, Charles Biederman,
relates to a particular episteme. In my first `critical' relationship to the problem of reality. referred to the structurist relief as 'the first
section the two examples were drawn from the These remarks serve to introduce the more truly Realistic art of man', in which 'art has
`classic' and the 'realist' phase: in my second recent works of Malcolm Hughes, in particular come into direct structural correspondence
from the 'classic' and the contemporary phase. those incorporating two juxtaposed panels with . . . nature as creation'. Malcolm Hughes's
Since I have taken particular care to use the which form a coherent series. recent works posit this equation of the natural
same semiological criteria in examining the two Implicitly, the artist has tried to introduce and the artificial sign not as a fau accompli
works by Cotman and Hughes, it may be as well variants within the same, or broadly similar, but as a problematic. q
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