Page 46 - Studio International - November 1974

leave behind are only drawing in a
limited decorative sense; the structure
they imply by marking horizontals and
verticals is largely a retroactive
reassurance. In the more fundamental
sense of design, the drawing is the
layer-structure, an imposed sequence of
planes that the loose paint vies against —
it's this tension that makes it expressive,
control and release. Spatial readings
are kept down by relieving the plane's
solidity with transparency, or dragging
it dry over wet paint: the residual
streaks give them direction and a
givenness (because moulded by force)
equivalent to the canvas weave. The
more open surfaces are the best, with
the planes coalescing as one event.
Such illusions sometimes get lost in
a collage of gesture. Planes get heavily
piled up in a set-piece drama of
climactic revisions, as if obliteration
Anthony Caro Piece CLXXI 1974
could be a creative principle. Colour John Milne Credo 1974
Steel varnished, x 24 x 78 in.
adjustments may be necessary to make Polished bronze, h. 37 in. Anthony Caro 'Table Top Sculptures'
the paint work in a visual sense, but at Kenwood House, London, October
they confuse the textural structure. There's been a lot of talk about the
The surface is replaced rather than on formal aspects. A lamp standard more in harmony with the Great 'elegance' of this show. It's not hard
responded to, unwieldy slabs clog up dips into the sky to establish a vertical Sphinx at Giza than the pure to see why. The combination of the
the canvas as though they themselves as well as to jog you into working out proportions of fifth-Century Athens. perfect-pitch Adam architecture of the
were the painting and the canvas a what you're looking at. Cloud spray- This preoccupation with openings rooms that it's set in, the title 'Table
supporting armature. Though stencil shapes flutter about with each into forms that partially enclose them Tops' inviting a reading of Coffee
archeological read-offs relieve some of other. Gradations shift in and out of runs through much of the work. It is Tables, the pristine white stands
the compression, the surface is too each other. But these optical its most interesting quality because the supporting rich brown sculptures; it's
massive — perhaps even more intrusion articulations don't work on the motif holes or gaps or openings contrast undeniably smart. The radical-chic
would do the trick. very much. On the contrary the suggestively with the clean factual school hurry on from there to point
The temporal structure does have reflections provide a context for some austerity of the enveloping form. This out that the edges are roughly torn,
an existentialist purpose, existence homeless abstraction. It may be a bit aspect of his development is most but carefully so, that surfaces are
through action, asserting and negating of a cheat to make a photo-based clearly illustrated by Credo a work in rusted, but that the process has been
previous layers. But riskiness can't be painting resemble an abstract one, but polished bronze approximately three fixed beneath layers of varnish, and,
designed into a process. Revisions have it can work quite well. With so many feet high. The piece soars up steeply placing the whole body of work as
to be really drastic and not part of the gradations to handle though, facility into two sharp claws. As important politically right of centre, give it the
formula to work. There's a fine vertical must be a double-edged problem — here however as the forceful display of thumbs down as art. Which is a
painting in the top room where a brown they could readily fail by having too this private obsession or the more questionable verdict to reach about an
impasto creeps across toward a green much or too little. confident expressionistic quality of the exhibition of sculpture.
wash and really surprises it. But the One painting is sufficiently weird angular forms, is the explicit suggestion Leaving Caro's politics out of this,
best paintings do without drama. The to vindicate the complex approach. of a philosophic statement. Divorced the show does indeed tread a very fine
pay off comes from treating the whole A sinister stream of warped horizontals as it is from direct landscape inspiration, line, both literally and metaphorically.
surface as equally the painting, fill an abyss between two broody this is one of the few works that can be The physical stance of these pieces is
subordinating drawing and gesture to buildings (hints of Holbein's skull). accepted as a truly abstract concept. uneasy. Lying on platforms that are
this recognition. The two large Knowing it could be bent back into a And it succeeds better than most other in no way passive in the manner of
paintings in the lower rooms are terrific, coherent image doesn't loosen its hold pieces precisely because the underlying either plinths or table-tops, these
are painted into existence. The entire — it increases it. Surrealist hints like intensity of feeling has not been so sculptures constantly invoke the drop
surface is stretched open and occupied: this may be an answer, provided they're firmly contained by the more literal between support-surface and floor
the paint-events form a spectacle that is more than wide-angle lens gimmicks. allusions to antique subject matter or plane. Lapping, hanging, stretching,
inseparably the surface. Disturbing visual assumptions is a lot location. rippling over the crisp edge, with some
Bent images reflected on car more fascinating than painting a given An interesting example from this sculptures more off than on the raised
surfaces — Brendan Neiland has staked subject well. more literal wing of his art, which surfaces, the show's a series of
out his patch without equivocation. lames Faure Walker derives unambiguously from landscape, precarious and nervy-balancing acts.
Few realist colonists have mined such is Corinthos. It is almost a figurative This, plus the irregular and near-
rich terrain: the spatial throw-abouts sculpture of a glowing mediterranean organic shapes that the thin steel has
of the canvas as reflective surface: sunset on the Bay of Corinth been snipped up into, pastry-like, and
distortion without angst: floating John Milne at the Marjorie Parr Gallery, contrasting with the dark and barren the dark and mellow, in places almost
biomorphic shapes: baroque vertigo of London, 4-26 October hills behind. Thus a small three-piece woody, surfaces, connects it to British
skyward views. The ideas flow out John Milne's dominant concern since work sloping gently down and inwards sculpture of the fifties, albeit that the
with no shortage of visual insights. he became a pupil and assistant of is highly polished on one side and left original brew has been passed through
His surrogate surface is as much Barbara Hepworth in the early 1950s, with a dark bronze patina on the ribbed many filters. Remember all those near-
the photograph as the car bonnet. Any has been to carefully establish his own sides and smooth dark back. The large abstract figures forever standing on their
stray metallic gleams are subdued identity. It was also in these early piece Draa which again was inspired by toes about to take off or topple over,
under the matt spray. The colour is years that he became deeply interested landscape, in this case a Moroccan broodingly dark and loaded with angst?
coloured-tonal, partly the effect of the in classical history. This led to the mountain range and its valley, falls It's just a faint whisper, but
image losing its colour in the colour of extensive travelling in the mediterranean into the same pattern of compact, unmistakably there. Risky bedfellows
the reflecting surface. The main image, countries which has inspired so much firmly organised form. As in Credo for a sculptor who's received the
office buildings, apart from being of his work. His decision to settle in the shape contains a sweeping upward Greenbergian accolade.
inverted and distorted by bonnet St Ives today, a choice motivated as thrust, a sharp diagonal momentum Old assumptions that the organic
curvature, hovers in the canvas, lost much by the 'southern' radiance of that gives the work a vitality lacking in element in Caro's sculpture worked
(like the photo) in its grain. The scale Cornish light as the evocative landscape, some of the other exhibits. This because it was in tension with the nuts
is the no-scale of the poster, larger completes the early yet enduring buoyant mood is reinforced by the and bolts and section character of the
than life, about seven feet across. series of influences that have formed bold slit of space cut into the centre of steel he used are routed here. The over-
Unlike the small studies the three the basis for all his researches so far. the sculpture and echoing its shape. all feel of these sculptures is hard to
larger paintings don't play around very Of all these sources, and no attempt When the sun-worshipping Milne convey, but it is certainly anything but
much with ambivalence. They are is made to disguise them, the ancient loosens his grip, as he did recently with hard. Soft would not be that
more distortions of architecture than mediterranean civilisations have clearly the significantly entitled Credo, inappropriate a term but for the
they are curved surfaces reflecting appealed to him on a very deep level. something a little less elegant, a little unfortunate connotations of huff n'
architecture. They fend off the The cold caste bronze Propylaea refers less moderate, a little less mediterranean puff disposables. The quality of
paradox of the line that might be part of course to the monumental entrance emerges and the deeper Northern immediacy about them is almost
of a building or part of a wiper. Instead gate of the Athenian Acropolis. But current of his sensibility brings him painterly; they feel as though they
shapes are either recognisable or clearly its heiratic, austere facade and the much closer to that personal identity have come together all at once.
unrecognisable. Curiosity doesn't deep tunnel bored into its temple head for which he clearly works so hard. Technically of course they are still
seem called for. They try and get by has a mysterious menacing quality Michael Goedhuis assemblages — a modelling of sorts —