Page 54 - Studio International - September 1974

though the image of the clumps is Nash made for the Unit One reproducing sixteen of Long's works, The exhibition is limited to works
imbued with a sense of personal exhibition in 1934, a time when he eleven of which are shown. This book done between 1967 and 1974 in
reference that gives it a distinctive was rather uneasily tackling what he is a striking object of eccentric England, Ireland and South America.
status, the picture does not have the saw as the conflicting demands of proportions (111 by 174 inches, Even so its exceptional size reveals the
strength positively to require our abstraction and symbolism. The height before width), textless but with variety and richness of Long's work,
attention. symbolist elements, marks on the captions and title page in elegantly something not always appreciated
The group of Nash's thirties and stone shapes which represent the letter-spaced Gill Sans and a layout when, as has usually been the case in
forties oils are well prefaced by the Avebury megaliths, are clear, though in which great attention has been Britain, one or two pieces are shown
inclusion of a single First World War not a very happy invention. In pursuit given both to the precise placing of in isolation. Long has now ranged
painting, 'We are Making a New of greater abstraction Nash has half the captions on the page and to the over the landscape of half the globe
World', a remarkable picture of abandoned naturalistic space, and has proportions of the margins around the (at least) carrying on what Ann
REVIEW
wartime Flanders, shelled tree trunks, also gone a long way to eliminate photographs (some of them bled on Seymour has referred to as 'a
cratered earth, but no soldiers. It has a variety of texture. But he did not all four sides) as well as to their philosophical dialogue between the
studied symmetry, as if to show that adopt frankly non-figurative colour, choice and arrangement. If bought at artist and the earth' (The New Art,
1
it is intended to be a generalized with the result that there is a vaguely the exhibition it comes in a pleasingly Arts Council catalogue, August
representation rather than a particular defined figurative space and a simple wrapping of plain brown paper, 1972) ; it is clear that wherever he
0
one, and a hard paint surface : vestigial landscape reading. Having the flaps stuck down with brown goes and works the art he produces is
qualities that recur in many of the failed to transform naturalistic space gummed strip. always an amazingly specific and
thirties oils. To move, as one does into painterly space through The Scottish National Gallery of appropriate expression of his response
here, more or less directly from 1918 abstraction of colour, Nash could not Modern Art is an austere stone house to a particular place and set of
to semi-abstract landscapes like make the areas of the picture that on a hill in the middle of the Royal circumstances. In England in 1967,
Equivalents for the Megaliths and should have emerged as abstract Botanic Gardens. These beautiful confronted by a field of daisies, he
Objects in Relation (both 1935) appear other than empty. Nash's gardens provide an appropriate setting knelt and plucked off their heads one
highlights some of the characteristics feeling and talent was for deep, for the exhibition : the visitor arrives in by one until a cross was formed. This,
that define Nash's best oils up to the dramatic space. He never succeeded a state of pastoral bliss. In the Gallery like all his art making, was a simple act
mid-thirties : clear definition of space, in oil painting, as he partially did in the works are arranged in a series of but it has always seemed a specially
tight structuring of the compositional watercolour, in assimilating the kind interconnected bare white rooms memorable one and the piece
elements, a paint surface that is firm of shallow space evolved by Cezanne. flooded with northern light of a (England 1967 in the first room)
and positive, whether it is finely The exhibition also shows the peculiar softness and purity. In these remains one of his early masterpieces.
textured with the brush, as in evolution of Nash's late oil style cool spaces Long's map and In Ireland early this year in the rocky
Equivalents for the Megaliths, or through Landscape from a Dream photograph pieces are hung one or landscape of County Clare he turned
relatively flat as in 'We are Making a (1936-8) and Pillar and Moon two to a wall, their sizes, proportions up stones to make a standing group
New World'. (c. 1938-40). Colour in these oils and the density of the hang perfectly (Stones in Clare) and elsewhere
Looking back from the later becomes more spreading and related to the size and shape of the simply moved some into a line. In the
viewpoint it is easy to see why so luminous, as it does in the late rooms. The overall effect is of a severe Andes in 1971 he made a circle of
many of Nash's twenties landscapes, watercolours. The compositions are but not clinical chiaroscuro, the relief stones, irregular in size, some of them
with their open, multi-directional less tightly formed and more lyrical. It being provided by the pale green of scattered so that (like many of Long's
brushstrokes, seem rather arbitrary. is a pity that there is not one more late the map pieces (carefully distributed works which involve moving stones or
Such pragmatic handling of paint was oil to show the climax of Nash's through the rooms) and the soft twigs or other elements of the natural
not really a fruitful line of exploration landscape painting. The best of the brown of the slender plain oak frames world) it seems to be a natural feature
for Nash, whose best paintings were late landscapes are monumental that Long puts on all his works. or, if man made, the remnants of some
not only prefigured in his mind, but celebrations of the life-death cycle by
envisioned with a sharpness that left an artist who was able to profit from
him limited latitude in the process of the sense of the imminence of death Richard Long A Line in Ireland 1974
making. One of Nash's particular skills offered him by the long decline in his
was the organization and control of own physical strength. The Gallery's
images in his mind, and the own painting Landscape of the
maintenance of this control through Vernal Equinox (3rd version, 1944)
the act of painting itself. The result, in is not quite one of the best of these.
a picture like Objects in Relation is the But the deficiency is partially made up
perfect poise of the objects, which are for by the inclusion of Nash's last war
neither thrusting, nor self-effacing, painting, the large Battle of Germany
but simply there, plain to see, yet (1944). Though it is a programme
mysteriously unexplained. Intellectual picture, made with the help of
planning alone does not account for photographs of allied bombing in
this. The personalities Nash's objects Germany, and is constructed round
acquire depends very much on their representational forms, its burgeoning
colouring and texture, and the way colours and elaborate exchanges of
these infer different kinds of space and colour activity make this picture, too, a
different degrees of abstraction. very personal celebration.
The importance of facture to the Andrew Causey
success of Nash's oils is obvious;
though his inventiveness in this
respect has not been well appreciated. Richard Long at the Scottish
The surface of Equivalents for the National Gallery of Modern Art,
Megaliths is very forceful but at the 20 July-11 August
same time delicate. Whiteleaf Cross At the Scottish National Gallery of
(1931) is a particularly well made Modern Art, Edinburgh, David Brown
painting that includes a beech wood has organized the largest ever
made by drawing the end of a palette exhibition of the work of Richard
knife in long strokes through dense Long. It brings together the seven
brown paint. Such details of handling photographic and map pieces from
vitalize the images within the the Stedelijk show in December-
framework of a precisely prefigured January 1973-4 and the nine shown
concept. at the John Weber Gallery, New York,
It is revealing to compare these in May this year. Few of them have
pictures, in which much attention is been seen in Britain before. In
paid to the texture of the paint, with addition there is a floor sculpture, a
the Landscape of the Megaliths, in twig piece, which is new. There is no
which it is thinner, flatter and more catalogue, but the occasion has been
even. This was one of the paintings marked by the publication of a book