Page 79 - Studio International - March April 1975

effect of feeling its way exhibition recently at the V and A `new' about this movement. Of
systematically across each surface (English Influences on Vincent course Realist painting has never
and form with a rapt and Van Gogh) is Vincent's impatience had much to do with 'reality', but
affectionate attention, with those who denigrated these artists actually focus their
establishing its limits and surface illustration. Maintaining 'the attention on the interface between
in much the same way that the need we all feel to be told the `reality' and 'falsehood'. The
decoration was able to do; but it truth', his three years in England movement is largely American,
also has the effect to a great left him with a low opinion of flourishing in the Nixon era, when
extent of irradicating the English painting — with the the words 'real' and 'false' became
irresistably attractive handwriting somewhat quaint exception of almost interchangeable, and,
that has sometimes threatened to Millais's Chill October — but an following their president's
Anne Redpath dog Grant's work with an enduring enthusiasm for Dickens, example, Americans refined their
Objects on a Red Cloth 1963 ability to believe in their own
Oil on canvas appearance of near-facility. He is George Eliot and Carlyle and
33* x 44 in one of those painters who is above all, for the English black- deceptions. As Warhol put it
apparently incapable of making and-white illustrators, whom he `everything is sort of artificial. I
an ugly mark, and whose sense of admired for their realism. It is don't know where the artificial
harmony and natural lightness of salutary to see, from the stops and the real begins'.
touch is so much developed that painstaking way in which he Many of these artists — the
the work's seductiveness can all accumulated and filed large photo-realists — do not work from
too easily belie the importance of numbers of popular engravings reality at all, but from glossy, and
what it has to say. There is still an from the Graphic and Illustrated often staged, photographic
incidental quality about some of London News, how he took with renderings of it. Their subject is
the best late paintings, together the utmost seriousness the kind of the image on a piece of paper —
with a precision of content and reproductions after Luke Fildes, reality processed and re-presented.
idea, that draws on all the old Herkomer, Barnard and Frank It is America's view of herself —
knowledge, of abstraction Hol that often look highly glossy cars, smiling people,
included, to culminate in melodramatic now. He saw glistening horses — all clean, new
misleadingly straightforward- parallels in their feeling with and beautiful. Others like Alex
seeming canvases like Late Roses Diirer and Whistler. What was Katz, work from life but sift and
of last year. more, he copied them assiduously. select their information and
It is this kind of thing that The dignity and simplicity of the falsify their images.
ultimately reinforces the view that group of awkwardly-drawn Katz's paintings made me sick.
painting may still have something single figures by van Gogh The longer I stayed in his
to offer — a sentiment voiced himself that comes at the end of exhibition at the Marlborough the
more than once in justification by the exhibition can be seen to stronger became my abdominal
David Hockney, a watercolour derive clearly, not so much from pain as if I had been kicked in the
Duncan Grant
Gilbert and George 1974 sketch by whom, for one of the any formal or expressive theory stomach. Naturally I was angered
Pencil, gouache and oil on paper '60s pool paintings, is in the of his own, as from the quite by such physical displeasure and
211x 151 in
travelling show of Modern specific, and even anecdotal, rejected the source as vulgar,
British Watercolours that quality of the illustrations. banal and mindless. But I was
originated at the Victoria and It may be that all these reminded of Leo Steinberg's first
Albert last month. Though instances have comparable encounter with Jasper John's
hardly detailed enough to more starting points with the object, Target paintings in 1958. They
than hint at the synoptic view of and a reasoned pattern of made him feel angry and
20th-century British painting development dependent on it, depressed and he felt a sense of
claimed for it by the museum, the that in the present situation is loss and bewilderment. 'It looked
selection does contain some good worth reconsidering. to me like the death of painting, a
working drawings by Hilton, Christopher Neve rude stop, the end of the track', he
Scott and Hoyland and a dazzling wrote. Leo Stein felt the same
dummy run in watercolour for when he first saw Matisse's Joie de
Bridget Riley's Byzantium (1969), Robert Cottingham Vivre in 1906, but after returning
Eric Ravilious all of which have a scale and At the DM Gallery, London. to it again and again, decided that
Farmhouse Bedroom 1939 intention that accords tellingly 30 January-1 March. it was a masterpiece and promptly
Watercolour with the row of marvellous bought it. Was I also mistaken?
42x 120 mm
vorticist drawings facing them Alex Katz Was my nausea a symptom of
In tune with the other philistinism undergoing a cultural
exhibitions mentioned here, At the Marlborough Gallery, assault? I went upstairs and
however, there is an equally London. 29 January-21 February. passed a showcase of maquettes
strong if less self-assertive by Moore, Hepworth and
pattern set up by those artists in Philip Pearlstein McWilliam which seemed
between, like Ginner, Wood, At Gimpel Fils, London. absurdly tasteful after the bathos
David Jones, the Nashes, 4 February-8 March. of Katz's crass images, and so I
Bawden, Burra and, perhaps returned to attempt a more
especially, Eric Ravilious. It is A painter friend recently constructive appraisal of his work.
interesting that in company like Born in 1927 Katz is one of the
diagnosed the present sickness in
C. J. Staniland this, to some degree suggestive of the artworld as a 'post-conceptual Pop generation, but his present
The Two Widows the overall scheme of portrait style makes Lichtenstein
From 'The Graphic' 1880 menopause'. He was referring to an old master and Pop an orgy of
42x 120 mm developments, his rather dry, the sterility that has afflicted
linear, pattern-making style painters ever since their faith in painterly nuance, subtlety and wit.
should carry as much weight. Like He paints his friends in a style
colours and decorated by her the relevance of painting was reminiscent of illustrations from
when living in France. Equally, Lanyon, he was supremely shattered by the conceptualist travel brochures and women's
the radiant Omega doodling with affected by, and good at `purges' of the late sixties. One of magazines. His sitters gaze out of
which Grant and Vanessa Bell suggesting, location and weather. the symptoms of the nervous
Though his RCA design-school the canvases through vapid,
covered not only furniture but apprehension engendered by the
training never left him free to be expressionless eyes made bright
whole rooms has found its way present 'cliff-hanging condition of
less than specific, his attraction
into these recent oils, and in painting' has been a withdrawal
now seems to lie in the clear and
celebrating the objects (in surprising pictorial uses he found into formalism, and a second is a
Charleston interiors) Grant return once again to realism.
for ordinary objects, for a piece of
celebrates the decoration too. machinery, a greenhouse or — in Three of these 'New-Realists'
It looks initially as though the had one-man shows in London
this case — a farmhouse bedroom
small touch with which the and passage furnished ruthlessly during February. Their version,
latest paintings are built up is a in patterned wallpaper. around since 1957, has been called
hesitant, almost uncommitted, `Sharp-focus', 'Radical-new' and
mark — see, for example, his Without wishing to overstrain 'Photo'-Realism, but has been
gouache and oil of Gilbert and the notion of the unabashed use of dismissed by critics as a
George — but that impression a literal starting point, it is worth resuscitation of Pop or just
Philip Pearlstein
disperses very quickly when it noticing that one of the chief another academiscism. Both these Female Model on Iron Bench
becomes clear how it works. The lessons of the other extremely views, however, are too simple Oil on canvas 1974
quick, sharp brush stroke has the useful and revealing travelling and overlook what is actually 46 x 60 in
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