Page 51 - Studio International - December 1974

John Carter Black Ring 1973
Painted wood with metal and plastic Helene Fesenmaier's studio C. R. W. Nevinson A Group of Soldiers
35 ins diameter, 10 ins projection 1917 Oil on canvas.

canvas. He wishes to avoid the painter's two but also presents a unified and is very delicate. She builds her units, futility of war. Paul Nash's scarred
mark, the signature, so that the paint harmonious whole. Whereas assemblage hammering together the blocks and battlefield We Are Making a New
appears to arrive softly over the canvas. is very often manipulated by artists of planks of wood with tidy precision World echoes the pleas of English anti-
No trickery is involved. The paint anarchic or dadaist tendencies, but without excessive fussiness — the war poets such as Wilfred Owen.
retains its identity, and illusionism is Fesenmaier's is cool and classical and odd nail is left exposed, the pine she Nevinson's group of sturdily realistic
equally countered by a deference to the may be seen as developing out of the uses, when not left bare, is usually soldiers home on leave was censored by
activity of painting. Although his cubist tradition. painted thin enough to show the grain the War Office, to which the artist
colour (generally misty blues, twilights, Making units built of simple planks of the wood. replied: 'I will not paint "castrated
strong mauves or subtly bright whitish and blocks of wood in order to draw Because of the scale her work is Lancelots" though I know this is how
colours) lies horizontally across the from them, she found the drawings always easily approachable. Each Tommies are usually represented in
canvases (which are often larger than became progressively more illusionistic, piece is man-sized and relates happily illustrated papers etc. — high souled
6 x 8 feet), one does not read them so her desire increased to render the to an ordinary domestic environment. eunuchs looking mild-eyed, unable to
directionally across or vertically, for surfaces of her constructions more A tranquil invitation is extended to melt butter on their tongues and
the motion to which one is drawn tends painterly. Concurrently she was expand our experience of the space mentally and physically incapable of
to be into the canvas. Stubbing has also becoming preoccupied with the we move in. It is worth accepting, for killing a German — I refuse to insult
recently started to dapple over the relationship of her objects to their it proves both enjoyable and rewarding. the British army with such sentimental
gentle layers of slightly pulsing colour, environment. The next step was Fenella Crichton bilge.' Nevinson, for whom a critical
introducing another note in another perfectly logical. Her two- and three- reassessment is long overdue, emerges
pitch which overlays the theme and dimensional works joined forces and as a remarkable artist. He studied at
extends the dimension. became linked as single works. Painting We are making a new world: Artists in the Slade 1908-12, quickly assimilating
All the works are entitled Expanding and sculpture each reasserted their the 1914-18 War, Imperial War all there was to learn from modern
Light with their appropriate number, traditional identities, but at the same Museum, London. Organized by the English art, before sharing a studio with
and all were painted recently. time became revitalised by their Scottish National Gallery of Modern Modigliani in Paris, where he came
Stubbing seems to work simultaneously interdependence. Many of her most Art and toured by the Scottish Arts under the influence of Futurism.
with the development of an idea, rather successful pieces are those in which Council. Returning to London he published
than performing a particular work from colour is eliminated entirely and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern with Marinetti the manifesto Vital
a specific drawing, so that he achieves paint confined to monochrome. In Art, Edinburgh, 12 October — 10 English Art in June 1914. Remarkably
immediacy and ingenuousness. Perhaps these the light and dark tones are used November; Aberdeen Art Gallery and eclectic in style, it is almost
his lack of formal art school training solely to emphasise the way in which Museum 16 November — 7 December; inconceivable that The Doctor painted
has helped him to avoid the space is activated by placing a three- Dundee City Museum and Art Gallery in a powerful expressionist style in
retrogressive self-consciousness of 'how dimensional construction in relation to 14 December — 4 January 1975 1916 should be by the same hand as
do I see myself now that I've invented a painted surface. The balance between This exhibition is a powerful reminder the cubist Troops Resting or Marching
what I am?' to which many 'professionals' canvas and construction shifts but it is that the subject matter of the Great Men of the same year. Then in 1918,
tend to resort. Stubbing is no bravely always clear which has been assigned War inspired a number of British artists, his New English Art Club style of
inventive wild man of painting, but his the leading role. Sometimes the flat regardless of stylistic allegiance, with Paths of Glory, a painting which starkly
contemplative voice is very necessary surface is used merely as a backdrop the means to produce some of their depicts two dead Tommies face down
to remind us that man is the professed against which to place the complexities best work. It also illustrates that one in the mud was exhibited at the
inhabitant of a soul. of an asymetrical construction. Thus of the finest collections of early Leicester Galleries with the word
Penny Hawkins a row of sparse black planes is fixed at twentieth-century English art in London 'censored' pasted over it.
angles so that the diagonals created in John Nash, born five years after his
can be seen at the Imperial War
space are echoed by the triumvirate of Museum. Some of their most important brother Paul, is represented by Over the
lozengé-shaped panels behind. In other Top, a remarkable work and one of the
paintings can be seen here: Stanley
Helene Fesenmaier at the New Art works the construction is limited to a Spencer's Travoys arriving with few paintings by an official war artist
Centre, London, 2 December — 4 slender frame or window, through wounded at a Dressing Station, to record a specific army action, the 1st
January which the spectator is made to view Macedonia of 1916, Wyndham Lewis's Artists' Rifles in action in the snow at
Assemblage demanded an entirely new the painting. For instance a hoop is A Battery Shelled, 1919 and Paul Marcoing on 30 December, 1917. Also
relationship between work and suspended from a gallows-like Nash's battlefield painting after which included are two magnificent
spectator because it offered a reality construction, its vast curve providing the exhibition is ironically named. watercolours of 1918 by William
quite different from that created by a counterpoint to the softly-rounded In contrast with some of the Italian Roberts: one of soldiers experiencing
abstract art. We have become corners of a three-dimensional painted futurists, starry-eyed with excitement the use of gas masks in the presence of
accustomed to art that depends on its panel. The relationship between the at the prospect of experiencing live poisonous gas and another of signallers
relationship with the spectator and are two is always the vital third ingredient, action and expressing it in a hermetic laying wire in the Rosiéres valley.
even prepared to become active irrespective of whether painting and cubist idiom, English futurists however Artists of an older generation such as
participants. Helene Fesenmaier construction are physically joined or analytic (in this context the most William Orpen, D.Y. Cameron, Muirhead
merely prompts the spectator into exist as separate entities. European work is Nevinson's Marching Bone and Lavery responded in different
making his own contribution to the Her working drawings encapsulate Men, a gouache of 1917 reproduced on ways. Orpen, jealous of not being
dialogue that is already set up within the two most striking qualities of her the catalogue cover) managed in a assigned a private car by the War Office
her work. She combines painting and work. They provide clear evidence of number of cases and in spite of their was knighted in 1918, and the sickly
sculpture in a way that not only her approach and at the same time her government commissions, to frame fauvism of his Dead Germans in a
explores the interaction between the use of chalk produces an effect which their paintings as a protest against the Trench, in fact more modern in