Page 59 - Studio International - April 1974

UK Reviews One is continually confronted with minimal art attempts to eliminate 'What we are offering is something
of Roger Hilton's work and continues
meticulous detail as in A Young Girl
sentiment by an appeal to the
Martin Naylor, at the Rowan Seated by her Window 5, where objective facts of the material world, less complete and a good deal more
Gallery, London, February. attention in one instance is the theatrical isolation of Naylor's informal. Perhaps this suits the
British painting and sculpture has channelled to the diagonally opposite objects emphasizes materiality only Serpentine best; it certainly suits the
often been characterized by an corners of the plywood backdrop, one to lament its insufficiency in informing season. Perhaps too it suits Hilton's
emphasis upon detail and upon corner being cut off and positioned upon his private world. It all work'. Certainly the exhibition looked
complex relations in preference to the on the wood to form yet another area constitutes an existential plea to good. It was very appropriate that the
bland formality of American formal of attention, whilst the same shape communicate the impossibility of exhibition was held in a gallery
abstraction. (as that of the cut off corner) is communication. To use a perhaps where through the windows there was
The eradication of detailed blocked out by yellow tape in the other. remote literary analogy Martin an interplay between the paintings
specifics of overt relations and Yet the audience is not initially aware Naylor's works would be compatible and their 'subject'-life outside.
connotations is indeed the motivation of such scrupulous detail, for the with what I would expect if someone Beautifully hung (remarks on small
for formal abstraction, the reduction sculpture is dominated by the large re-wrote Sartre's Nausée in the style points would be quibbles) the
attempting to develop purely formal metal stand placed centrally in front of Alain Robbe-Grillet. pictures fitted perfectly the scale of
art-works understandable in of the plywood, on which stand a In recent years British art has often the different size rooms and the
themselves and in the desired broken cup, a piece of glass and a few fallen into disrepute for its tendency large paintings had the space they
absence of connotations. The bits of paper making up a 'still life' to embellish upon the paradigms needed. The sight of the pictures
emphasis is concomitantly upon composition, the whole frontispiece more radically ventured by American from outside the gallery was a
the material character of the artifacts casting a heavy shadow onto the artists, though of course this is all reminder of the possible need
in the negation of overt signifying wooden backdrop. The assemblages part of consolidating a new aesthetic (security permitting) for galleries to
properties of the medium. Indeed the shed their fortress-temple image and
'truth to materials' inclination, in to be their own shop window to
being extended beyond the tempt the hesitant passer-by. In
conventional forms of painting and some strange way Hilton has
sculpture to the unstable and succeeded in conveying, in
'informal' artifacts (of sometimes paintings of great vitality, which are
quite extreme character) have at the same time ambiguous and yet
operated as further eradications of direct, something of the essential
explicit reference. One might regard qualities of life : slightly messy,
the work of Robert Morris, Barry awkward, unpredictable and comic.
Flanagan, and others in this light. Alan Bowness has pointed out that
The work of Martin Naylor uses as a 'Hilton's painting is essentially a
starting point the reduction to prolonged and groping exploration of
materiality achieved in the preceding the body's sensations in the
generation, but in a way which in intractable terms of paint on canvas'.
most respects is alien to their To this must be added Hilton's much
motivation. The unrestricted range of quoted remark 'There are situations,
materials and the lack of formal states of mind, moods, etc. which
constraint for their usage— the call for some artistic expression ;
instability and informality of their because one knows that only some
use— is adopted by Naylor not for the form of art is capable of going beyond
purpose of further negating them to give an intuitive contact with
signifying properties in the art-work, a superior set of truths. The direct
but on the contrary precisely to stress Martin Naylor A Young Girl Seated by her and the accusation equally applies to imitation of life or nature cannot
the referential. Nor is he interested Window 5 1973 Mixed media, 81 x 113 x 33in. American artists. Just as Richard Long express the complex human situation
in making further avant-garde has turned the post-minimalist which exists for us all today'. It has
extensions by rejecting certain visual seem to be designed to evoke a mood, 'truth to materials' conviction into a been held that, artistically, Hilton
conventions. Instead Naylor is not unlike that of Giacometti's celebration of nature and the was a slow developer. That is
making a concerted attempt to sculptures. The look of isolated countryside, Martin Naylor is probably so, but this exhibition did
reintroduce more particular visual poverty of the objects composing the attempting an existentialism in the not provide the evidence to reach a
properties. The preceding generation tableaux by their spatial same idiom. Ian Burn has remarked conclusion. Five works dated from
of post-minimalists sought to evince disparateness seems aimed at giving that artists are all playing a game, the before 1939 (during the war Hilton
the aesthetic potential of any and all the impression of a 'dumb' residue of a rules of which are devised in America did not paint), and six from 1947 to
physical properties once private world known only to the in such a way that only Americans can 1952. Two works were of particular
appropriately placed (contextually) sculptor and mysterious to all else. win. The pivotal regulation is in the interest. Girl with a Horse of c. 1933
for such scrutiny. The visual appeal The mystery seems contrived as does adoption of the 'look' of the day and showed the tongue-like forms
of Naylor's sculptures or assemblages the unknowable private world it freedom of choice consists in the reaching in from the periphery of the
is reminiscent of Giacometti and implies. Giacometti's works, like motivations accommodated therein. canvas which often occurred in works
includes a great deal of Giacometti's Naylor's, make their immediate appeal The Americans are always the winners of the 50s and 60s. Underwater
sentimentality as well as his use of through the manipulation of space. precisely because their involvements Scene April 1947 was in many ways
materials carefully manipulated to However, the fragmentary, isolated are with appearances and their works one of the most interesting works
make overt their poverty. Naylor elements do not operate within remain uncluttered with commitments in the exhibition for here was seen
restricts his materials to plywood, existing and variable spaces, but alien to their form. But it is for the first time Hilton's characteristic
unprimed canvas, fine wire, black rather are placed within a constructed subscription to the game in the first boat-shaped form. To a brown squat
painted cast steel and wood, space. This is the sense in which place which requires reassessment semi-ellipse attached black lines at
limiting the colour range whilst the Giacometti's Palace at 4 a.m. can be rather than the manner of subscription. the top suggest legs, pictorial depth is
posed informality is calculated to said to be theatrical. Naylor similarly The idiom or format assented to very shallow and across the picture
give the impression of unrestricted uses horizontal and vertical planes (of should follow rather than preceed plane are scattered irregular round
arbitrariness. The mixture of 'ready- theatre and backdrop) as parameters the motivation accommodated. forms and, most clearly recognizable,
made' and constructed objects are in which any piece of personal Perhaps then there would be more a shape recalling a jelly fish. The
afforded deliberately eccentric minutiae will be afforded a theatrical than a single game in which to painting can be read as an
spatial interrelations achieving the meaning and evocation of sentiment. participate. underwater scene ; almost equally it
desired effect of looking (as individual Giacometti's tables and large Rosetta Brooks can be read as one very close to
objects) arbitrary and isolated from horizontal stands and Naylor's abstraction. One would like to see
one another, linked and unified, it backdrops are at once the 'setting' for Roger Hilton: paintings and more Hiltons of the period. (We know
would be supposed, by personal the sculptures and the sculptures drawings 1931-1973, at the all too little of the development of
reference and connotation, though themselves. Serpentine Gallery, London, 1-31 abstract art by British artists after the
the limited colour range and use of Where Giacometti alludes to the March. war, an activity in which Scottish
canvas and plywood as backdrops isolation of Everyman, Martin Naylor In his preface Norbert-Lynton argues artists played an important part).
seem more to achieve this effect. alludes only to his own. Where the need for a full-scale retrospective The period 1953 to 1974 was