Page 102 - Studio International - July August 1975

time, such as poetry. Yet his is of course true to some extent so consistently shown the illuminate, in the last resort, the
critique was incorporated as a of every mobile. But it is worth refinement of taste which is the morphological feature which has
necessary basis in Pater's taking into account the features hallmark of Mannerism. Even if come to dominate virtually all of
celebrated argument that all art which distinguish Kenneth it is too early to make any overall his most recent sequences, in
aspires continually to the Martin's mobiles from other, conclusion about the place of particular the Chance and Order
condition of music. For Pater, normative examples. In the Kenneth Martin in the evolution paintings which extend in date
awareness and exploitation of the mobiles of Alexander Calder, to of the modernist idiom, it is safe right up to the present year.
sensuous sub-stratum of each take the obvious case, there is a to predict the type of These pictures are, on the most
distinct form of expression was cunning and playful use of contribution which he will be basic level, the record of a
integral to the achievement dynamic counterpoise which seen to have made. If Anthony number of crossings. The number
of the musical tendency. Each art succeeds in establishing a plastic, Caro may already be credited sequence generates the
could be thought of both in the even pictorial composition. In with the achievement of extending exploring line, but it is in the
specific, irreducible conditions one of Kenneth Martin's screw the boundaries of sculpture, it is crossing, precisely, that pre-
of its production and in its mobiles, or even in his more precisely in his determination to constrained order is resolved
aspiration towards a form of recent Rotary Rings, it is no remain within the boundaries of into the individual event. if it can
expression emancipated as far as longer a question of composition constructive art — at the extreme easily be predicted that a
possible from these conditions. in any comparable sense. The limits — that Martin's position particular configuration of lines
In a curious, and perhaps work does not resolve itself in gains its importance. will cross another configuration
unique way, Kenneth Martin plastic terms (does not achieve, This distinction is a relevant as a certain point, it cannot be
has succeeded in unwinding this as in the case of Calder, the kind one, since it helps to suggest predicted or shown — except in
nineteenth-century problematic. of dense, illusory space that we another reason for Kenneth the finished work — how they will
He confesses: `I am not really a associate with a Miró). It is — Martin's exemplary position as an cross. The crossing serves
sculptor'. Presumably he would simply — `given to rapture': it English artist. Irretrievably therefore as an index of the fact
not even consider it worth saying fulfils in delicate and deliberate linked with the concept of a that the work exists in time and
that he is not really a painter. It gyrations the laws of its own classical art is the old myth of space, that it has generated
is on these grounds, obviously, inflexible structure. In the more `translatio imperii', the onward certain conjunctions that cannot
that he sustains his claim to be an recent Chance and Order series, movement of the classical spirit be satisfactorily conceived
exemplary artist, one whose this movement is all the more which Gray was ready to trace except in the concrete form in
significance for his peers and effective for being merely to his own country and time: which they appear. Yet the motif
pupils is amply attested in the implicit. In the exquisite pencil When Latium had her lofty of the crossing can also be seen,
volume of tributes annexed to drawings, particularly, the spirit lost, on the poetic level, as the
the Tate catalogue. Yet the successive stages of the lyric order They sought, oh Albion! next rhetorical figure of chiasmus: the
achievement of this status is in a are directly conveyed. Movement thy sea-encircled coast. distribution of terms not in
way tantamount to the renewal of `into the unknown' is now a American culture has, as parallelism (ARAB) but in such
links with the tradition of `ut function of the chance operations Frank Kermode demonstrates a way as to establish a direct link
pictura poesis'. For, in his of the number series. Yet as the in his reading of Hawthorne, or crossing (ABBA). Chiasmus
determination to be something reading eye follows the responded to this idea from the is the figure which 1 have used in
other than a sculptor or a complicating or unfolding late eighteenth century onwards, this review (18thc./Gray/Martin/
painter, he has in effect revealed structures across the page, it and its echoes seem to me to lie 20thc.). It is also the figure
himself as the author of a discovers adventures of rhythm in just as surely in the pages of appropriate to the idea of
poetics — a rhetoric of the the neatly organized stanzaic Clement Greenberg as in those of transplantation, to the
development of the plastic form progression. Henry James. (Arguments enterprize of marrying the here
in time. It is hardly surprising to However it is not enough to about the complicity of and now with the then and there.
find him evoking this process, localize within an extended American post-war painters with We might almost conclude that
and progress, in a supple and comparison of this kind the the political imperialism of the the intersecting structures in
penetrating diction which recalls distinctive character of Kenneth Cold War might well take account Chance and Order are more than
the revivified rhetoric of the Martin's art. What is equally of this more venerable, cultural the external signs of a mannerist
Russian Formalists: `The norm, important, without doubt, is the imperialism.) Britain has, since sensibility (as, for example, in
the powerful monotony, becomes explanation of why this lyric the eighteenth century and among Caravaggio): that they
an episode or a field which style, in particular, bears the visual artists especially, seemed incorporate a dimension
(the artist) develops, changes or imprint of classicism in our own to abandon the claim. Yet Kenneth historically opaque but
interrupts through the use of period. Here, once again, Martin, by his exact imaginatively accessible,
slight changes or direct Anthony Hill is acutely aware of historical response to the cubist/ precisely that between the code
oppositions.' As we might the issue, when he suggests: `it constructive tradition, has and the myth, or between the
expect, the language itself mimics has always struck me forcibly that succeeded in naturalizing in Classic and the Modern.
the tensions which it describes: it he may have had a profound Britain the mythic phase of an Stephen Bann
is itself built up of the hesitations, advantage over artists like myself international movement closely
oppositions, equivocations and by having opted for abstract art identified with the classical spirit.
promises of release that the work when he was 40 years old (and It is difficult to think of a work
embodies. The gap is narrowed, abstract art 50 years old).' which symbolizes the achievement
as in Gray, between the poetics and Kenneth Martin's art more effectively than his
the effectual 'Progress' of the demonstrates, in effect, the outstanding construction in
work : response of an exactly adequate Trumpington Street, at the
. . . Frisking light in frolic intelligence to the problems set southern entrance to Cambridge
measures; by the development of constructive (Cambridge, where he has
Now pursuing, now retreating, art in its post-war `mythic' or stopped in admiration in front of
Now in circling troops Mannerist phase. What he the precise, repetitious armorial
they meet: himself portrays as his departure carvings in the ante-chapel of
To brisk notes in cadence from `a conscious orthodoxy, the King's, themselves the product of
beating, true development of the mythic, mannerist phase of
Glance their many-twinkling constructivism, the true the English Gothic). This is a
feet. development from Mondrian', is work which is perfectly suited to
Here we might isolate what surely the recognition of the need its strategic urban site, and yet
could be called the specifically for a rupture — of the need to creates at the same time an effect
lyric form of Kenneth Martin's acknowledge the morphological of transplantation, as if the very
art. The mobile is, let us say, the mutation of the abstract purity of the form betrayed it as
modern Aeolian lyre. It is a vocabulary at a stage where the having its origin elsewhere.
structure summoned up by the original formal constants could Perhaps it could be thought to
artist, apostrophized not by the have no value except as citations. represent the problematic
vocative but by its deliberate Max Bill and Richard Lohse, to achievement of `translatio
placing in space (paintings and some extent Vasarely, have carried imperii' — the half wistful, half
sculptures may be seen as out in their respective ways the triumphant juxtaposition which
statements or propositions, but logic of this position. But, with Pater identified in Gaston de
the mobile is a citation — or a the possible exception of Lohse, Latour as `the naturalization of
parenthesis). Like the Aeolian no European artist has so • Greek beauty in the brown
harp of Greek myth, it hangs in exclusively and productively cloud-lands of the North'.
the wind and becomes the vehicle developed the mannerist To view Kenneth Martin's
of an unpredictable melody. This sensibility: certainly no artist has work in this light seems to me to

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