Page 78 - Studio International - March April 1975

Several other scholars deserve redolent of an almost touchingly already had a unity arrived at via both on the significance of
mention but for lack of space only unquestioning assumption of the a complete knowledge of, and ordinary objects and on the
two can be singled out here. One continuing validity of drawing affection for, the history and essential identity of the canvas,
is Jack Lindsay, whose monument and painting as a means of topography of specific places, above all, as a flat surface
is, alas, the recent ITV film. In expressing ideas, which seems which he was able to paint animated by ordered colour.
1966 Lindsay re-discovered the much more than 15 years old, but truthfully as a sequence of The colour could seem verging on
madness of Turner's mother and which carries with it now a sensations — a response, not a sweetness to some tastes, where
brought to light again the gruff, euphoric sense of old enthusiasms conditioned reflex. He may have she was painting in areas
forceful, secretive sun- and sea- and lost horizons. What is more, been fanatically attached to sometimes (deliberately) beset by
gazer portrayed by Leo McKern, it appears to exhibit few of the Cornwall but any political or toothsome oppositions of pink
who was in some ways terminal symptoms diagnosed so diplomatic assertion of its and orange or a swingeing
undoubtedly convincing. One readily at the time, least of all the identity on canvas would surely Windsor blue and cerulean, but
only wishes the film had tried less soft-centre or exhausted- have struck him as a derisory her handling and sensibility are so
hard to be up-to-date. The other tradition syndromes. limitation. A similarly exquisite that passage after
scholar is of course Lawrence Take, for instance, the show in unfashionable attitude to the passage takes off unerringly.
Gowing, whose Turner exhibition February at the New Art Centre demands of place is epitomized by These paintings are not so out of
at the Museum of Modern Art in of almost 30, mostly late, Anne Redpath. She, too, died ten touch with living as to be merely
1965 first made Turner known Lanyons, including Flyaway and years ago, coincidentally ten advanced essays in orchestrating
and fashionable in America. What Two Place. It is ten years since years to the day that her recent colour. Objects on a Red Cloth is a
did that was the explicit and Peter Lanyon died, at 46, a exhibition opened at the memorable example of the pitch
implicit parallel drawn between particularly difficult ten years for Mercury. she had brought this to in the last
Turner's late works and American this kind of painting, yet — This, surely, should have five years of her life, but it never
painting of the 1950s, though the especially to many of the painters looked like one of those colourful does to overlook the corollary of
parallel was emphasized more by who visited the gallery — the lyrical displays from the RSA in these luxuriant hot choruses in the
other commentators than by work has never looked better. In the '50s. The heady smell of oil recurrent pictures about white,
Gowing himself. Ten years later retrospect like this, it increasingly paint and a tremendous fanfare of the chalk white of walls, green-
we can see that this was something slips the allusion to his friends vermillion and rose madder. It has white of magnolias or Christmas
of a red herring, for Turner was among the Abstract been, and often still is, a curious roses or the translucent white of
not, after all, an abstract artist. Expressionists, although he paradox of Edinburgh painters porcelain.
His art was literary in its origins repeatedly makes an angle-and- that in a grey city they paint with Perhaps these in the long run
and essentially landscape-based. curve gesture reminiscent of a Mediterranean palette, the hold up best of all. Downstairs at
Yet Gowing, who has now de Kooning, and finds a thermal twin results of travelling the Mercury there was the
retreated from the American of his own that is conspicuously scholarships spent in France and watercolour Objects on a Brown
connection, remains the most dependent on Ben Nicholson and Italy, and a natural reaction, Cloth, as moving as anything else
perceptive and brilliant writer Nuam Gabo. But it goes almost perhaps, to those precious she painted, and inseparably
about Turner we have — the without saying that the whole accents of induced colour linked to the firm structure of the
K. Clark de nos jours. Which is impetus and exhilaration of these glimpsed briefly through the haar 1942 Still Life in oils upstairs,
not to say that Clark himself is not paintings relates to observed that rolls in off the Firth of Forth. extending back in a graceful arc of
still worth reading. And the landscape — not just in the West In Anne Redpath's case, reference to F. J. Petloe and
greatest of all has yet to be fully Country because some of the best however, the references to forward to the rest of the carefully
paintings on show were about Matisse from the mid '30s on were constructed Scottish/French
absorbed by Turner students:
Texas — and the gallery was full acquired by genuine osmosis, tradition which is still alive and
Ruskin.
of the blue air and vertigo of his from 14 years spent living in well in the work of Philipson,
Michael Kitson
free but rigorously self-sufficient France, the first five in the north Houston, Blackadder and the
and hard-won response to places and the remainder in Cap Ferrat, Michies now.
and the weather. Rothko and during all of which time she
That is not to say that such
Motherwell were left firmly in the painted hardly at all.
painters hunt in packs. Since the
museums. It was still possible to Again, it all looks more than
UK paint like this with conviction ten ever long ago and far away. At Scottish colourists, they never
years ago. Our response to it now the Mercury you could see the have. A point of similarity
Reviews is educated into wanting to see the essentially tonal landscape between two apparently disparate
constructions that informed the painting of about 1937 evolve into artists like Anne Redpath and
Peter Lanyon is that they both
groundwork of many of the those high-keyed arrangements of
reached a high degree of
Peter Lanyon paintings, because they are more affectionately selected objects abstraction that was dependent for
conspicuous as the armature organized on a surface tilted
New Art Centre, 41 Sloane Street. its source and effect not on colour
beneath Lanyon's resilient towards the spectator as though theory, nationalist preoccupations
arrangements anyway. for display. And in turn the or developments like Abstract
Anne Redpath There is a distinction worth table top or rug becomes the Expressionism, but essentially on
making between this kind of ringing colour field, on or
Mercury Gallery, 26 Cork Street. an absolutely consistent response
direct response to a location and parallel to the picture plane,
to their physical environment.
the concerted nationalism that across which the related incidents
Duncan Grant There are, of course,
conditions much, say, Canadian set up a system of climaxes and
Recent Paintings, unmistakable senses in which
or South American painting now. intervals, stops and starts of pure
Anthony d'Offay, 9 Dering Street. Lanyon's paintings from the early colour and scumbled texture. Anne Redpath came to treat still
life as landscape, and she was as
'50s, before he got airborne, She was fond of quoting Serusier, much obsessed by the notion of
Modern British place — Venice, Portugal, Corsica —
Watercolours as she was by the identity of
things.
Victoria and Albert Museum until
23 February. No one could accuse Duncan
Grant of hunting with packs.
English Influences on Threading the history of English
painting for the last 70 years
Vincent van Gogh there has invariably been the
V and A until 23 February gentle obbligato of his sequence of
usually lonely alternatives. But
Most London galleries have the first of his 90th-birthday
been somewhat introspective celebration exhibitions, the
recently. Uncertain of new recent paintings at Anthony
directions, they have been forced d'Offay last month, suggests a
for economic reasons into showing return to the object and to a
the fruits of happier times and in European mainstream tradition
the process have been providing, unequivocably at odds with the
not always consciously perhaps, extreme degree of pioneering
some ideal pauses for abstraction he reached in the 1914
reassessment — rethinks less of the kinetic collage with sound just
immediate past as of that half- acquired by the Tate. A key
remembered place just emerging Peter Lanyon ingredient of Anne Redpath's
from the dead ground on the Texan Highway 1963 high-timbre interiors was the
Gouache
other side of it. As an area, it is 10x 14 in furniture painted in primary
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