Page 66 - Studio Internatinal - October 1974

resolute, and has a good gestural
could be a separate painting. It's the A MOSCOW EVENT
simplicity: however the opposing L float
formations at either end don't help: they
suggestion of a gestural solution, not 'The Soviet Union's First Autumn neither encouraged nor forbidden. To comprehend the authorities'
the real thing. Moral: painterliness per Outdoor Art Show' However when the artists arrived on attitude it must be understood that
se gets you nowhere if process is a just The most dramatic confrontation the Sunday they were met by the the exhibition of pictures by such
pretext to be painterly. between the Soviet authorities and trucks. A scuffle broke out when the artists as Malevich, Kandinsky and
Peter Stroud's paintings at the Hoya Russian underground painting for more artists and spectators resisted this Chagall is still forbidden in the USSR.
are a stylistic contrast, an alternate than a decade took place on September force, five of the twenty-four artists The artists involved in the present
orthodoxy: hard-edge, right angles, 15, when an exhibition of officially taking part were arrested, along with dispute are only at odds with the
central image, symmetry, close colour. disapproved figurative painting was some spectators, and taken to the authorities because they have refused
But Stroud's experienced judgement closed down with the aid of 90th Precinct police station, and to conform to certain tenets of social
pulls them through the cliches: there's bulldozers, garbage trucks and street twelve paintings, tossed in a truck and realism. They are not 'decadent
not the qualification, the messing cleaners by local authority workers hidden from public view by some abstractionists', though this does not
about of someone not sure where to apparently under orders from the spadefuls of mud, were confiscated. A necessarily mean that they are divided
go — if anything there's too much of District Executive Committee of member of the District Executive from abstract painting groups in the
the opposite. S W Moscow. The incident occurred in Committee, who appeared to be in city. Central to the present protest are
The format (which resembles a front of several hundred members of charge, said the show was being Oscar Rabin, the internationally known
tennis court complex surrounded by a the public, including some foreign dispersed to enable the authorities to painter and Alexander Glezer, a poet
maze) arranges panels in rows irrigated journalists who were involved in the convert the area into a 'park of and one of the best-known collectors
colourwise by a network of thin lines. subsequent brawl. As a result much culture'. A protest demanding an of Russian underground artists' work.
The interaction is twofold: the slow international publicity followed. immediate investigation was at once They have both been active for many
pulse of the panels modulating in The show took place in an empty delivered to the Politburo by the years, consolidating contact with the
monochrome, and the sharp bite of the lot on Profsoyuznaya Street in the organizers. Next day four artists and a West through foreign journalists in
lines with their stronger hues, The lines southern suburbs of Moscow. Two photographer were found guilty of Moscow. The threat of international
cut into the panels like canals, setting weeks before, the original group of 'hoolganism': three, initially jailed for publicity affords them some protection
the panels in relief: this clarifies the eleven artists informed the Moscow fifteen days, have been freed, but the from the authorities but, nevertheless,
surface and rationalises the colouration City Council that they were intending best-known, Oscar Rabin and officially unacceptable art has become
of the panels. The lines are simply the to hold an outdoor exhibition in the Yevgeny Rukhin were fined a nominal increasingly difficult to exhibit. In
masked underpainting, which means that lot. This incurred an instruction, fee which they are refusing to pay. As milder times the use of private homes
the panels were probably balanced out acted upon accordingly, that the we go to press ten of the confiscated or clubs was tolerated. The present
while they were still masked — the pictures should be shown to the paintings have been mysteriously show suggests the artists were
chancy factor in the process to Artists Union. Nothing more was returned by a sympathiser, and the anticipating a total closedown. For the
compensate for the calculation. If heard until the Friday before the artists have asked for official police present it seems their gamble of
this was the case, it must have been opening when an official of the City protection so that they can rehold the forestalling authoritarian control by
quite something pulling the tapes off. Council reported that the lot was show in the same place on September bringing it to the attention of the
Either way, each painting is tuned to available and the exhibition would be 29. (Permission was granted). Western press has been successful.
its own key, separately judged, so that
what makes it right or wrong is an (Left column, top to bottom
open question. Yevgenly Rukhin 1973
80x 144¼ in.
In fact the question is not as open-
Yevgenly Rukhin 1972
ended as it could be. The format has 28 x 26½ in.
Oscar Robin Door 1966
visually vacant areas: the abandoned 32 x 40 in,
canvas edge, the gap between interior Coll, Alexander Glezer
(Right)
and exterior elements, the elaborate
Alexander Rabin
perimeters. These loosen the surface Lenin above the City 1974
28 x 36 in,
unity and let the linear become a Coll: Alexander Glezer
separable motif: thus the drenching (Bottom right)
Oscar Rabin
monochrome which submerges Reflections of a Church 796,
32x 44 in.
everything under a cryptic gloom. The
interaction can overheat, the motif
fluorescing in front: or it can be too
weak and inert, losing its frontal attack.
However the electric impulses picked
up by the icy blue lines are very nice
and invigorate the texture, with the
surface emanating a slow sheen.
Several are beautifully resonant like
this, and grow more so with further
acquaintance. There's a small grey
painting, square with a red motif, that
obviously gains from being simple: the
horizontal panel sequence is more
legible, the centre less squashed in, with
symmetry taking care of frontal
tension. The different weightings of
the panels aren't so buried in
monochrome, and have more influence
working back on the red lines. This is
the best and most hopeful painting.
A verdict on this show must be
provisional, since all the paintings were
done in 1971 when Stroud came over
from his base in the US, It would be
interesting to see what has happened
since, as the more recent prints don't
give much away: they are brighter
and more horizontal, but don't have
the magnetic hold of the paintings. One
moral of this show (which is above
average by the way, just) is how much
can be done with understatement (not
the same as quasi-intellectual
; reductivism). In spite of a few bruises
encountered in storage, some of these
surfaces are really eloquent: while
Trevor Jones's more literal surfaces
are rhetorical by comparison.
James Faure Walker