Page 12 - Studio International - December 1974

AMERICAN PAINTING AND BRITISH
PAINTING: SOME ISSUES
TERRY SMITH
The exhibition 'British Painting 74' at the
Hayward Gallery, London, in the autumn and
the J uly/August issue of Studio International
'Painting in America 1962-74', taken together,
show that a submissive provincialism remains
unmistakably definitive of the frameworks of
many painters here. which emerges in the exhibition's obvious
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By provincialism I do not mean a reflecting shaping by the current dispositioning of power
of one's geographic location, the surface-specifics within (mostly London) art school politics.
of one's local culture. This is regionalism, and it As I tried to show in a recent article,
marks the sensibilities of many of the figurative provincialism manifests itself most profoundly
painters in the Hayward show. Nor do I mean as an attitudinal response of labyrinthine
to make a special point of the petty localism complexity to an externally-determined hierarchy
of cultural values. [1] No matter whether an
artist, critic, dealer, curator, gallery-goer avidly
joins or remains defiantly nativist — or whether,
as is usually the case, you effect a compromise
between these two — you are trapped in the
provincial ist bind. We see this not only in Osaka,
Japan or Los Angeles, California, but also in
New York: the very structure of the New York
art-world is alienating (externalizing) of those
within it, just as it is alienating, in different
ways, of those without it. John Hoyland is as
provincialist as Patrick Heron, Dan Christensen
(Left) Gillian Ayres Painting 1974
Acrylic on canvas, 10x 15 ft.
Photo: Eileen Tweedy.
(Below) Trevor Jones Signals 1974
Acrylic emulsions on cotton duck, 71 x 177 in.
(Right) John Elderfield Winterbourne Gunner 2 1974
Acrylic on canvas, 90 x 60 in.
(Far Right) Albert Irving Across 1974
Acrylic, 8 x 14 ft.
Photo: Iohn Hunnex.