Page 64 - Studio Internatinal - October 1974

To balance out these graphic art moves totally arrange the work. The
botches, the Poles good news is they composition is however not stagnant,
reject tube-pure pigment and opt its shape bobs in and out of sight on
instead for single hue harmonics that graded colour, the work's cut edges and
run the tonal gamut. Zbigniew Dlubak's paper layers bringing organisation back
Ephemeral system-1 (1974) writes an to focus by anchoring it flat. This
exposé on naked tonal colour; his shape-tone play-off is the exhibition's
painting's bars are separated by canvas, prize. With it Artymowski lets modernist
they edge in and up its sides: flat white sceptics know value mixed colour can
to dark grey accompanying the climb. also be flat. The trophy's importance is
This uncomplicated presentation sounds of course relative, as Modernism is a
exciting, but it's qualified by out of critical principle recognized mainly in
touch brushwork and middling size. the West. Whether it proves these
Self-evident organisation makes dark paintings' appropriate measure, this
and light glitter only in water colour remains something Poles speaking
REVIEW 8
collage by Roman Artymowski. Sign from inside their culture must tell us
XV (1973) simultaneously composes by a return show which develops
ground and interior shape: a rectangle relationships pointed out in this
halved and a half quartered, plus a recent exhibition.
diamond shape put on top — these Caryn Faure Walker

Frank Stella Les Indes Galantes 1973 Seven colour lithograph, 16½ x 22 in.

without the impact of the cool tightness not totally inactive. Perhaps I am just
displayed in the neighbouring Tillyers, lazy and only capable of enjoying
yet they do have a power and honesty, vulgar sensationalism, yet I feel that
nothing overtly earnest or dedicated, a somewhere in the DM Gallery lurks
straightforward authenticity. The latter an apologetic presence, a great
qualities are not necessarily the American ghost, whispering, 'Well,
prerogative of the 'oldies and goldies' what do you expect out of a print?
league, as the three Warhol Marilyn ... Blood?'
demonstrate. I felt, however, that the P. Hawkins
Richard Smith Times Square
Remembered and the Peter Blakes, the
Lichtensteins and the Oldenburgs,
Polish Painting Today, at the Mall
although jammed with nice marks,
Gallery, London, 30 August-12
suffused with good taste and
September
undoubtedly authoritative, looked
Several months back, the Mall Gallery
simply limp. They have the visual
had a collection of Anglo-American art,
charm of 'the xerox copy of the
due for auction by Sothebys. They
original' and yet one's conscience
hung it crammed together, made it
always concedes to the suspicion of a
sweat bargain basement perfume and
lack of clarity ... a dodgy fakeness in
dampened the prospects of an otherwise
the whole thing.
swell show. End of August, beginning
The DM Gallery's Frank Stella
of September, the Mall again overloaded
exhibition is interesting and I use the
adjective 'interesting' advisedly in order its walls. 'Polish Painting Today' was a
to be non-commital, for I find these mixed exhibition (of recent paintings)
small prints executed between 1968 surveying tendencies in the last three
and 1973 a little puzzling and in decades of Polish art. For many
represented, it was their introduction to
themselves rather non-commital. One is
used to the swooping grandeur of us; a problem, since British museums
didn't provide a back-up with shows of
Stella's spectacular 1968-1969
paintings (Lac la Ronge 11 and Window Poland's earlier art. The exhibition's Roman Artymowski Sign XV 1973 Collage, 23½ x 21¼ in.
Sketch) and ready to exhale that catalogue corrects the lapse somewhat,
customary sigh of admiration when giving post-war influences as Surrealism
and Constructivism, the former Four sculptors at the Stockwell Depot, logic of a piece into its content; in this
faced with the work, yet the prints
which he executed at the same time as spawning a number of figurative modes. London, 10 September-5 October show there is less emphasis on the nuts
The crowded hanging conditions of the Showing at Stockwell Depot are four and bolts of engineering, and less play
these paintings leave one unimpressed,
waiting for the show to start. Stella's works were a real handicap. Sad to say sculptors; Peter Hide, John Foster, on gravity, weight and tensions. The
big exhibition at The Hayward showed against it and against our own modernist Anthony Smart and Katherine Gili. Of raw material is subsumed in the final
us an artist settling into fame and bias, but the work did not run very these, the first three are making work statement. The two big pieces carry
greatness, secure in the knowledge of well. that basically is to do with enclosing this to a kind of extreme, verging on
his power to impress, able to manipulate Particularly, its fault was lack of space as opposed to stringing through becoming sculptural teasers. They are
the subtle energies of grandly shaped inner direction: a nostalgia for it. Their works tend towards hermetic, both made up of four vertical lengths
canvases and brave simple ideas. One yesterday's Western Europe, that the self-sufficient objects that are wrapped of cross-section steel, joined up by flat
could forgive the embarrassment painters ape without faith. This is around a central spatial pivot, and one steel plates. One is effectively denied
inflicted by his picture titles and the evident in miscalculated relationships. is not encouraged to read them as visual access to the interiors of these
feeling that his intent is vaguely self- Size for example, is too small, right for groupings of elements still retaining pieces, but grasps the enclosed volumes
conscious, in the light of his big the lounge, but admit it, difficult for various individual identities. Neither is by moving around the perimeters. In
American generosity. This quality, us to see since Pollock. It's not that one drawn to relate these sculptures Shaft, more or less square in lay-out, the
however, is totally lacking in the 1968- easel-type painting couldn't be directly to one's own body space; the joining steel faces have regular lower
1973 prints and unfortunately the resuscitated if imagery were also made involvement is more detached, and the edges, but the upper ones are torn and
artist doesn't come-up with any fresh, but here it's stale. Dark response is one of appraisal rather than jagged, as though torn off at
substitute. His Aluminium Series prints ruminations parade protoplasm shapes, a physical pull. In many of the works, a approximately eye-level. The raggedness
are replicas of the large shaped 1960 found newspaper cut-outs, figure blank side is turned outwards, towards is hinted at along the vertical axes too,
canvasses contained within the tame 41 fantasies, automatic writings, across the the spectator, and the incidents and with the plates fitted snugly to the legs
x 55 cm confines of a print. Are these white surfaces. Mystery has maybe guts of the pieces are inwardly of the piece until they near the top
meant to be handy cash 'n carry gone out with the Freudian thirties: orientated. So, in the case of these when they start to veer off.Although in
illustrations of famous works for the unconscious titilation's not here. Jerzy three, it's a show of definite insides and a sense totally sealed off, the sculpture
man who can only afford £1 05, or is Kudkis proves one exception, he outsides, rather than backs and fronts. always reads as a volume; even when
Stella hoping to run in the postage wisely invests the absurd in Polska It seems to follow that two of the looked at flat on, there are glimpses of
stamp stakes? Do not think me (1972), dredging imagery in sexual artists here deploy a basically the upper limit of the inner surface of
ungrateful: I love his fashionable allusion and visual pun. He fudges the cylindrical format, while Peter Hide the far side. The four supports all
mauves, reds and browns and his lot though with icing sweet colour and explores a box-shape structure. Hide's angle outwards calling into play the
polygons, if you seek them out, are ruins its tang. previous work developed the structural surrounding space, while there's