Page 16 - Studio International - December 1974

(Above) Stephen Buckley Head of a Young Girl 1974
Acrylic on cheesecloth and cotton duck, 71 x 65 x 11.
(Right) John Hoyland Purple over Brown 20/5/74
Acrylic on cotton duck, 72 x 66 in.
(Below) John Walker juggernaut III 1973-4
Acrylic and chalk on canvas, 120 x 96 in.

(Centre) Tom Phillips Conjectured Picture No. 3 1974
Acrylic on canvas, 85 x 63 in.
(Below) Anthony Green My Mum's Dream 1974
Oil on board, 88 x 95 in.

is the central formalist circularity. 'version'. No problems about the absence of 'Modernist Art 1960 to 1970' is just such a
Elderfield is thus led to three obvious errors. any sense of oneself as a socially-bound, fallible study in orthodoxy. Walter Darby Bannard's
He barely stops short of openly attributing our observer. And no problems about gaps or miss- 'Morris Louis and the Restructured Picture'
process of valuing to the artwork as a property matches between one's pragmatically-embedded specifies, and celebrates, the historicistic
of it (its 'quality'). He does attribute our valuing in this ('real'/'possible') world and the determinism that pervades formalist thinking:
valuing to the artwork as an intentional aspect worlds of what one is valuing. He seems to be 'In retrospect, innovation seems inevitably
of it, i.e. structures 'are set up to achieve value announcing the first coming of 'the valuing eye' obliged at any particular time to take a
for the art'. And above all, he implies the of 'the ideal observer'. [15] particular form ... as if there is only one type
absoluteness of the operations of seeing With the exception of Peter Plagens's report of innovation which will 'catch' at the highest
structures and evaluating them. One has a on abstract painting in California, all the articles levels of artmaking'. And: 'Inspiration is 'in'
'perspective on tradition', a 'knowledge of in the J uly/August issue of Studio dutifully the artist just as quality is 'in' the painting.
history', a capacity to 'realize' the structures of follow the formalist line. The 'radical self- An inspired artist paints pictures of surpassing
artworks (pace Leavis) — all in orthodox criticism' which these writers are only too eager quality, and thereby is inspired. And so it goes'.
modernist/formalist versions, of course — and to see in the slightest changes of thickness of Indeed it does, in circles.
that's that. No problems about the liquitex and in the finest shades of difference Ken Carpenter sets out 'To re-examine the
contestability of any of these — to say nothing in echoing the edge are clearly not brought home Work of Kenneth Noland' but succeeds only in
of questions as to their possibility, whatever the to their own criticism. E.A. Carmean Jr's stating some obvious things about the movement
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