Page 57 - Studio International - July August 1975

of painting'." The comparison with decisive, drawn paint line, harshly
Warhol is obvious. As for his use of exposed against a dark ground and
photographs, not only was it considered representing a stick, in his Aubrey
banal for Sickert to use these in such Beardsley 1894 (Tate Gallery), already
straightforward transposition but, like looks like a passage in a Bacon. The
Warhol, he employed enthusiastically, contrasting 'monotonous' and
for large paintings, photographs which `mechanical' paint of the late works has
were banal in subject, or spur of the obvious parallels in Warhol.
moment in technique, or both. One is The straight and (for its date and
reminded of the revealing imagery in idiom) faithful transposition of an
Warhol's photo-derived commissioned ordinary snapshot to the size of a large
portraits by Baron's account (p.170) canvas is a gesture and act in itself —
Roy Lichtenstein `of how Sicken, asked to paint the the workmanlike blazoning out and
Look Mickey 1961 portrait of an eminent gentleman's sheer assertion of the facts in all their
Oil on canvas, 48 x 6o in.
wife, did nothing for some months, blandness and poetic strangeness — the
de-personalize painting, to make it the then unexpectedly arrived one positive expressive quality of which is
reverse of precious'." morning with his photographer to now easier to perceive. Peggy Ashcroft
`From one point of view it seems to invade the privacy of the lady's simply sits in space in a bathing costume
have been painted with a kind of bedroom as she was reading her on a diving board, and Claude Phillip
indifference to the subject . .. This newspaper in bed; then there was Martin is centrally seated, grinning, with
paradox — of abstract, almost silence again from Sickert until the a cricket bat, dividing approximately
meaningless paint and a sharply gentleman got a message to meet his 1,000 square inches of anonymous
dramatic total effect — is typical of wife's portrait off a certain train. greenery from a comparable quantity of
Sickert; it is his central characteristic'." When he commissioned a portrait bricks, grids and steps. These images are
Like Pop artists, Sickert was willing to of his wife .. . he could hardly have at once banal and archetypal, lifelike and
make use of banality on any level envisaged the big picture he received abstract, particular and almost banner-
except that of a painting's ultimate . . . It showed the lady's head, painted like, casual and timeless. After the bland
effect. There is a striking similarity large and looking very startled, in straightforwardness of the process of
between his 'Echo' An Expensive Half- the upper left half of the canvas; painting a picture such as Peggy
Sovereign which incidentally continues his the rest of the picture showed the bed Ashcroft in her Bathing Costume on a
preoccupation with the macabre, and and the unfolded newspaper'." Diving Plank, Sickert's un-Warhol-like
Lichtenstein's 1961 painting Look Although he did not use silk- inscription of his signature on so
Mickey. In each case, the situation is of a screening, Sickert's treatment of a relatively large a scale imbues the
type, and is depicted in a way, not photograph in the painting derived from picture, as a piece of painting, with a
normally associated with fine art at the it is uncannily close to Warhol's in positively existential quality. Although,
time, its derivativeness being intentionally several ways. The much reduced like Warhol, Sickert gives no
apparent to the viewer. In each case the emphasis on the painter's visual indication in a painting of a suggested
theme is the impending and discomfiting inventiveness (the degree of actual attitude to the depicted subject, he
deflation of the pride of a central figure, a reduction, if any, is another question) shares with Warhol an ability to select
discomfiture which is seen by the viewer inevitably directs attention to the sheer photographs that especially combine
to be anticipated by a depicted onlooker. material itself, its unusually raw, take-it- moral neutrality with an indefinable
This simple acceptance and translation or-leave-it quality. This quality, and permanent vitality in terms of openness
of a pictorial source, yielding a far from any implications of boredom it may and richness of suggestion. Thus, as in
simple experience for the viewer, carry, is expressive in itself, and was Warhol, whatever he did to them, and for
parallels and illuminates Sickert's surely so intended, with both irony and all the intrinsic interest of the matière
concurrent use of photographs. a genuine enthusiasm, by Sickert. The and our enhanced awareness of the act
Wendy Baron recounts that 'the same goes for the colours Sickert used by of painting, and even in the face of the
studio procedure whereby his students which, as so much more in Warhol, the `rendering meaningless' of the image
and disciples did more and more of the colours of the original scene, absent from through 'over-enlargement', the effect,
preparation and even completion [my the photographic source, are rendered with the unexpected freshness that is
italics] of a picture was a logical drabber or dramatically brighter by the always one of Sickert's hallmarks, is of
development from Sickert's continual artist. Throughout his career, Sickert the re-creation of the image, of the
attempts, from his earliest days, to had given unusual prominence to the increase of its power of association,
mechanise and systematize the process mark itself. For example, the dry, and of its special presence.
Peggy Ashcroft in her
Bathing Costume on
a Diving Plank c. 1934
Oil on canvas,
size unknown
Photograph courtesy
of the Leicester
Galleries

Claude Phillip Martin
Oil on canvas, 5o x 4o in.
Tate Gallery
37