Page 34 - Studio International - February 1974

the British 'middle generation' painters, I also Blue in Black; White in Yellow, June 1964
Gouache on paper, 22x 31 in.
pointed to :
Exhibited at Waddington Gallery, London, 1964
`. . . our rejection of the quite incredibly
widespread addiction — amongst American
painters of more than one school — to the
symmetrical format, the symmetrical image set
down bang in the centre of the canvas. This
symmetry, or centre-dominated format, has
become a vast academic cult, evident even in the
best Americans. The British 'middle generation'
never fell for this : we never abandoned the belief
that painting should resolve asymmetric,
unequal, disparate formal ingredients into a
state of architectonic harmony which, while
remaining asymmetrical, nevertheless
constitutes a state of perfect balance, or
equilibrium. That obvious 'unity', of image or
format, which the American cultivation of the
symmetrical canvas . . . produces so easily -- this
is a unity not worth having. Indeed, it has
short-circuited the whole process of pictorial
statement, which should involve an elaborate,
intuitive adjustment and readjustment of
initially warring and disparate elements, until
they finally click into the condition of balance' .4
In passing, let me say that this intuitive
achievement of balance in asymmetry is a
distinguishing characteristic of all the major
British 'middle generation' painters — Peter
Lanyon, William Scott, Roger Hilton, Alan
Davie, Terry Frost, Prunella Clough, Bryan
Wynter and John Wells, for instance. And it is
worth noting by the way that a number of
well-known American painters have recently sky, a formally neutral environment or mere their softness of touch, with the painterly
attempted to free themselves of the tyranny of setting for a number of more individual shapes — fuzziness of the boundaries between colour-areas
symmetry — and in so doing have come very this is a failure from my point of view. I believe (soft like haloes of light), they proved to be the
noticeably under the influence of the British absolutely in what I call the formal equality of end of seven years of 'soft' painting — painting in
`middle generation'. Equally, one cannot help all parts of the painting. To me, no section of the which 'colour had determined the shape' of the
noticing, as a general characteristic, that the picture-surface should be less of a shape than shapes, painting in which drawing as such was
Americans seem nearly always to be dominated any other . To me, there is no 'ground' in a good not visible — although it was implied in the
by ratiocination — as opposed to intuition. Even painting. The criterion of shape applies every bit disposition of the masses or colour-areas. But in
when at their most spontaneous, as in much as much to the largest colour -area in a painting — 1963, drawing re-entered my work: I found
Abstract Expressionist painting, their so-called the so-called 'ground' - as to the smaller ones. It myself suddenly using rough charcoal sticks to
spontaneity is too often in fact an intellectually was my hope and belief that all of the black area demarcate or draw-in the boundaries or
apprehended and controlled formula standing in Black Painting had formed itself into a single frontiers of all the colour-areas, on a white
for 'the spontaneous'. Nevertheless, in spite of plane whose linear boundaries or edges, whose ground; and before applying any paint to the
this general indictment, American painting did linear limits, made of it a single, coherent formal canvas at all. I found myself doing this
have its great moment of spontaneous unit. If you imagine that black area held against incredibly unpainterly thing — making a drawing
inventiveness — just before 195o: and I speak a white wall with all the non-black area-shapes and then painting it in ! And the perversity of it
as one of the first of those outside America to fret-sawed out — would that remaining black all was that I had only just written, in 'A note on
have hailed and acclaimed that moment and that silhouette retain the formal unity and my painting: 1962', the following sentence: 'I
achievement in print.:, completeness of a fully integrated image in its do not find myself "designing" a canvas : I do
The shape of colour. For linguistic own right ? For me, it would have to; and so too not "draw" the lozenge-shaped areas or the soft
convenience and brevity one often makes use of would the much 'emptier' orange area in squares'. The apparent contrariness of one's
a word the implications of which are wholly Orange Painting (Brown, Ochre and Black): impulses as a painter was very clearly
inaccurate for one's real purpose. To use the January 1962). If these large areas did not have demonstrated to me by this episode. But
word 'ground' to describe what is in fact merely the same formal completeness as area-shapes as perhaps this inconsistency was more apparent
the largest colour-area in a painting of mine is the much smaller areas, then the painting would than real ? What I had just said in words, about
convenient: but it is misleading — for the fail to meet that, to me, absolutely central not drawing or designing, was a fairly accurate
following reason. 'Ground' implies a criterion of the good painting — namely, the comment on what had been happening in my
pictorially passive area; a mere space, even a equality of parts, the equality or evenness of painting up to that moment: I now think there's
vacuum, in which — or against which — more the pressure or movement which all its little doubt that, by finally expressing the point
positive shapes are set. Any painting in which component shapes must mutually exert upon in words, I actually de-fused whatever remained
the largest colour-area feels like a curtain or each other. of my interest in those soft-edged areas, whose
back-drop against which more formally definite Pictures like this Orange Painting, painted in shapes had indeed 'materialized under my brush
or active forms or shapes are set; any painting January 1962, marked — as it turned out — the when I started to try to saturate the surface of
where the largest area appears as an emptiness, a end of a development in two respects. With the canvas with . . . varying quantities of this
72