Page 83 - Studio International - January February 1975

collecting. His was the ethic of entering a period of true promise. Lorraine Gill is inspired by
`base wisdom' as George Orwell Soon after her arrival from Cezanne. She is not interested in
pointed out. He was Australia to England in 1965 and much twentieth-century art. It is
unsentimental to the point of some influential artistic for this reason that she has been
brutality about sex. For instance, experiences in Italy and Germany, able to preserve her remarkable
a scene in a maternity ward: 'Did Gill embarked with cartesian loyalty to painting. And although
his father have curly hair like this? rigour on a painting career. From her own works don't quite stand
don't know, Ma'am, he had his the fundamental 'What was up alone without the support of
hat on!' It would be foolish to meaningful to paint any more?' their philosophical foundation,
attempt an analysis of the past she was led to analyse the nature the simplicity of her vision endows
attitudes to sex of the lower- of light. Her earlier works are them with a freshness, indeed an
middle and working class only on about light, its range, its effect originality, which goes some way
the basis of McGill's cards. It and its creative properties. These to explain these early hints of
would seem however that his works are therefore about a myth.
audience found it unnecessary, energy, growth and continuity. Michael Goedhuis
at least in their humour, to Titles like Evolution, Curved
idealize human relations or Universe and Finite Infinity
maintain postures of Christian supply access to the 'content' of MICHAEL ANDREWS
virtue. In the context of the the paintings. Suggestive abstract At Anthony d'Offay, London
daily lives of working people forms are released and left to 19 November - 13 December 1974
Paintings can rarely he said to
in the first six decades of this float in a blurred space created by be nourishing, but the recent
buttocked young women, whose century these attitudes are part wash upon wash of wafer-thin exhibition of Michael Andrews's
knickers have fallen down at a of what Richard Hoggart has pigment. These shapes — ovoids, new work gratified the senses.
race meeting, which is captioned called 'working-class stoicism'. pulsating verticals, compact It also stimulated one's appetite
They're Off! Alternatively a In his justly famous essay on square modules — are symbols — for another consideration of what
'picture-like' orthodoxy of the comic postcards of Donald symbols of movement, change, has become familiar territory, the
rectangle within blue framing line McGill, George Orwell wrote: flux. The flow of energy, that comparison of reality to its
and white intercede is used for the it would be mere dilettantism literally represents the artist's photographic image. The four
moonlit spooning couple in to pretend that they have any perception of the world about us, landscapes shown at Anthony
`It's most confusing! Mother tells direct aesthetic merit'. Orwell is created by subtle layers of d'Offay's were painted between
me one thing and you tell me had fallen into the impoverished staining. Symbols hover in an 1973 and 1974. At first impression
another'. McGill usually tilts the aestheticist notion of the ambiguous space and generate they were similar — each a
ground upwards which gives aesthetic. He was saying that complex mutual relationships. In velvety blue surface which had
strong angular perspective to McGill's work was not Curved Universe for example a been impregnated with a
the horizontal elements. concerned with 'purely plastic rhythmic interplay of half moon precisely described imaginary
What chiefly thickens McGill's and spacial appearances', which shapes creates an amorphous scene. In three works the
jokes is the consistent world according to Roger Fry were pattern that suggests an explosive architectural subjects seemed to
which his characters inhabit; `the one constant quality of all creation of galaxies. have been derived from the
even the furniture of his pictures works of art'. Unlike Fry, In line with the Bergsonian drift synchronization of a number of
McGill was not trying to of her thinking at this time, the
has a particularity. He cut-out illustrations. However,
exaggerates some aspects of the universalize and immortalize the paintings betray a strong because the silent buildings and
real world of his audience and etiolated sensibility of the aversion to absolutes. Although highways lay on distant planes
ignores other parts of it; there bourgeois intelligentsia. Having carefully finished technically, bathed in artificial light they had
are no jokes about working in never been to art school he had they contain a variety of references an insubstantiality suggestive of
factories, his characters have not imbibed the idea that it was which defy definition or more transparencies projected on a
sufficient liberty, such as being sinful to work for the non- exactly can be defined in a number shimmering screen.
on holiday, to be in unusual initiate. He was not hag-ridden of different ways.
situations. His carefully shaded by a need to fulfil an exaggerated An interesting work which
figures cast small shadows which idea of art's importance and foreshadows her subsequent
give them weight and space. value. And for the public who involvement with the underlying
This allows him one of his chief bought his work realities did not structure of matter is
means of characterization: have to be confronted ersatzly Communications Network. Using
gesture and posture. His drawings through art and their culture soft yellows and delicate stains
of hands and feet are perfunctory. made transcendent. of green as a hardly vibrating
The range of facial expressions is Andrew Brighton background, Gill has imposed a
limited; but the whole body is thin network of white line, like a
used as an expressive means. In LORRAINE GILL detail of a honeycomb. Units of
Yes, I always put moth-balls in At the Grafitti Gallery, London space are linked at cross-sections
my drawers.' But don't you find November by slim cutting arcs — they Michael Andrews
them very uncomfortable?' the At least three events have `communicate' as pockets of The Spa, 1973 6 x ft
naivety of the last speaker is recently awakened curiosity space or atoms of matter.
conveyed by a comparatively about this artist's paintings. Her more recent works deal One's reaction to the exhibition
unsophisticated hair style, First she has been the subject of with line rather than colour, was no doubt conditioned by the
chinlessness, ungracious bosom, expansive critical eulogies from structure not space. The sensuous expectation preceding this one-
an awkward posture, knock John Berger, in which sonorous seductive surface quality of the man show, the first in eleven
knees, and inturned toes. refrences to Duccio, Grünewald earlier works is replaced by a years, by an artist whose work is
The postcards of Donald and Cezanne have implied, I harsh all-over angular rhythm in said to be purchased by the most
McGill had a limited function think falsely, that Lorraine Gill's metallic primaries. They are again discerning English collectors.
and record only partially the work is hardly more than a step the result of a return to essentials This knowledge made one both
values and experience of his away from historical significance. or wanting to start all over from curious and cautious; one felt
audience. He does not explore, Secondly every work in the the beginning. She uses the handicapped by not being able to
extend or criticize through his current exhibition was sold to a fundamental components of form, trace the development of his
medium. He drew a frame around Luxembourg Investment verticals, horizontals and imagery in the intervening years.
his work to emphasize its Company on the first night for a diagonals. First these were Ironically in both his recent
theatricality. However, this total of £12000. And finally, distributed arbitrarily over the paintings and his more famous
denaturalizing proscenium arch apart from having contributed picture surface and then in later public commissions Michael
failed to make acceptable his to a recent television documentary works imposed on nature. Andrews has followed a stylistic
view of human relationships to on Cezanne, she is shortly to be Although they seem to be path which runs parallel to the
many watch committees. McGill the subject of one herself. I visually at an opposite pole from mainstream of British art in the
was prosecuted for obscenity a believe Lorraine Gill is the earlier works, they share the last fifteen years. The landmarks
number of times and only became justifiably bemused by these same respect for transition. of his career are typical of his
a respectable cult figure after the sudden manifestations of esteem. When for example this format is generation, among them the
growth of media libertarianism And therefore, rather than applied to literal subject matter, Expressionism of his Digswell
in the sixties. But he had been strengthening her confidence, as in Still Life the objects can period, the painterly-pop style of
making jokes about being kissed they may have succeeded in just be identified through the the narrative pieces like
on the breakwater when most undermining it. This would impacted surface. But they only All Night Long and The Deer Park
media men thought that be very unfortunate because her have relevance in that they are a and finally the Photo-Realism of
cunnilingus was an Irish airline ambitions are indeed small part of a larger and more the latest series.
and fellatio was Italian for stamp interesting and her work may be important overall design. The important distinction