Page 82 - Studio International - March April 1975

`normal' life because of physical thereby simulates the surface of a
disability and so painting was painting which has been
like music for many folk thoughtfully attended to the kind
musicians, a way of normalizing of surface that accrues when the
his life. Because of a weak heart painter has an understanding that
he was prevented from attending penetrates deeply into his working
school and was faced with many and which aims at a precise
hours of enforced passivity which realization of a painting. Seago's
he spent painting. Secondly by work is made doubly magical for
virtually avoiding art school his his audience by exhibiting both
common sense understanding of qualities of intuition and
painting was not thrown into contemplation. He has taken the
doubt by initiate criticism. symptoms of critical process, in
Consequently his work remains the work of Constable and
within the horizon of his Cézanne for example, and
audience. It is not shaped and simulated them. The symptoms of
made difficult by values outside of acute awareness become an
the middle class consensus. ersatz patina and a signifier of
However, his sketch-like finish conventionality and tradition.
suggests the absence of pre- Bourgeois culture seems forced
Robert Hunter Untitled Edinburgh Installation 1974 meditation as if each work was into shallowness in order to
Acrylic gloss paint direct on to the wall 90x 120 mm
the miraculous outcome of a maintain apparent coherence: it
themselves out. Commenting on painting. Although the catalogue passionate intuition; the work of papers over its contradictions,
his New York pieces, Max of this Edward Seago memorial an artist, an especial being. Seago's paintings turn their back
Kozloff not unfairly concluded exhibition does not give the Because of their chiaroscuro on the very real tragedy of his
that Hunter's work effaces itself. owners of the works, on earlier Edward Seago's East Anglian class and by keeping its
Self-effacement has to do with occasions lenders have been less landscapes stand out amongst contradictions out of focus serves
modest understatement, to the burglar conscious. The catalogue contemporary traditionalist to reassure them that within their
point of personal concealment. to Seago's Norwich Castle landscape painting and it is this horizons major art can still be
Hunter's stencilled marks are not Museum retrospective in 1962 that makes them particularly made. British bourgeois culture is
greatly revealing in any expressive lists as lenders not only most of effective armatures for nostalgia. now probably both incapable of
sense, unless one cares to the principal members of the Bursts of warm sunlight on far making or seeing major painting.
elaborate the implications of Royal family but also members of fields under cloud crowded skies Edward Seago made a number
their assuredly elegant coolness. the House of Lords, the give a sense of distance, place and of trips abroad, including around
Unfortunately the ability to be Commons, captains of industry, dramatic unity to his pictures. The the world voyage with the Duke
cool is in itself neither remarkable high ranking officers of the armed paintings are made to evoke of Edinburgh on the Royal Yacht.
nor unique, especially in the forces and newspaper proprietors. landscapes, weather and Laurens van der Post in his
context of art over the past 15 But while it included works sentiment and not made to be introduction to this catalogue
years. But Hunter's art is of a kind borrowed from Lady. Tate, there examined consciously in detail. reports Seago being 'so distracted
that discourages any wide were none from the Tate Gallery, However, their details serve to by the overcrowding and
associative view — the spectator for Seago's success lay outside the solicit an emotive response by apparently hopeless plight of the
must somehow contend with the professional community of re-assuring their audience that Chinese population of Hong
visual and physical facts alone. painters, cultural civil servants this is the appropriate use of the Kong that he could hardly paint.
Luckily the very spare experience and art school teachers. Apart the artifact. So although the This led Seago to adopt a boy as
of his elemental forms is not from a brief time at Norwich paintings formal characteristics his son in order to bring him to
without its pleasure. The subtlety School of Art and some contact are peripheral to its audience they England to be educated. Seago
of his painting is a precious thing, with Bertram Priestman R.A., he are significant, they serve as a keeps his concern outside of his
albeit as fragile and as - was self taught. He never taught legitimating frame, they invoke paintings of Hong Kong. The very
intentionally ephemeral as the in an Art School and only had one 'art'. Painting becomes an symptoms of overcrowding and
sealed, world-denying pupil and that was Prince Charles acceptable form of fetish in which poverty he makes pleasing, for
environment that supports it. who took up watercolour painting dwells one of the British ruling instance light plays pleasantly on
The overall maturity of because 'it's very rewarding, very classes self-mystifications. For a carpet hung out of a window in
intention and outlook reflected hard work. And marvellous for example, Waveney Valley, like A Street in Hong Kong. Seago's
by Hunter is indicative of the Christmas presents!' most of the paintings in this paintings seem unassuming but in
situation shared by his Edward Seago's painting is exhibition, is painted on white fact are powerfully selective in
contemporaries working in particularly revealing of the primed board. This brush stroke what they see. There are no
Australia, those artists who have emotional lives of our ruling class textured priming serves many pylons or cars in Seago's East
long since discredited the pursuit because unlike middle-class functions in these paintings for Anglia, nor are his skies crossed
of mere chauvinistic, regionalist consensus painters he was instance, it evokes the roughness by the vapour trails of exercising
mythologies in Australian art, in comparatively free from the of upturned earth and unifies land jet bombers. Just as his eclecticism
order to embrace the more demands and self-awareness of a and sky. But most importantly it is formalist, that is ignoring the
significant issues and problems professional community. In two suggests an accumulation of brush processes behind appearance, so is
facing art in general. Whether respects he was a middle class strokes where in fact there are his view of East Anglia superficial,
Robert Hunter in particular version of a folk artist. Firstly he two; the priming and the visible for it is not only thoughtless of its
proposes any new advance was prevented from leading a top paint. Seago's priming conventions but also of its
within an idiom that long laid subject.
claim to innovation remains the
one necessary, though by now To show that the English
heavy-handed, question tempted countryside is a worked landscape
by his very delicate, minimal shaped by the human industry of
forms. many generations is perhaps to
Bruce Adams invoke ghosts that Seago's
audience do not want to meet.
Nor does it wish to face the
necessary pessimism of its beliefs
Edward Seago and values. In contrast Paul
Nash's paintings touched the
1910 —1974 Memorial Exhibition, nerve of human despair in
Marlborough Fine Art, Dec 1974 conservatism when he showed the
masculine infertility in continuity;
'There is an essentially his landscapes are ancient,
agricultural and even feudal style childless and immutable as if only
of Britain as it presents itself to apparently effected by human
the world; but perhaps also as it industry. In such a view the sum
presents itself to itself.' This of human misery is constant for we
quotation comes from the Hudson are helplessly locked in nature and
Institute's report on Britain. It is we cannot change the human
one discovery which the C.I.A.
Edward Seago condition. Seago ignores such
could have made less expensively The Waveney Valley content and only seems to glimpse
by examining our rulers' taste in Oil on board his subject like a holiday-maker
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