Off season
ART BRYAN ROBERTSON
Waddington's Gallery has a highly personal summer anthology ranging from Hayden, Milton Avery, Hitchens and Heron through to Hoyland, who is represented by a few recent but fairly run-of-the-mill smaller paintings. They are eclipsed by a tall work of Terry Frost's—not unlike slatted blinds of primary colours, curved at the extremities—which gives an encouraging glimpse of a middle-generation artist whom we have not seen for some while. The best things here, though, are three '68 drawings of Picasso : familiar themes of artist and model, reclining lovers, and nude female instrumentalists are still more than enough for a superlative display of pure line in opposition to space which never takes off at the expense of the subject. These drawings are as vigorous as anything done in the artist's prime, and have a relaxed, exploratory air which is touching and beautiful.
The Redfern has a smarter-looking, more sparsely hung show than usual; 'but little stands up to prolonged inspection except a fine wall- sculpture of Bryan Kneale's, downstairs, in which a bronze dome, polished bright gold, protrudes from a large black circular disc and
yields up some menacing hook shapes instead of the blander activities suggested by the rest of the sculpture's appearance. There are also some good drawings of coloured fantasy- towers by John Carter, whose first show arrives, very promisingly, this October. The most personal works at the newly neighbour- ing Leicester Galleries, now moved to Cork Street, are a group of small gouaches by Keith Vaughan—notably a drawing containing a shell—which relate strongly to life and per- sonal experience, are beautifully executed, and seem to express more within their four by five inches than many vast exercises in optics nowadays.
Round the corner at the Marlborough is a house show with some engrossing sculptures by David Smith, horridly disfigured by seals of authenticity impressed into the sides of the bronze bases, with Smith's signature and a huge number, presumably from the late artist's `estate' coding, which look like car number- plates and seem nearly as big. The Marl- borough is also showing fine large works by Moore and Hepworth as a follow-up to these artists' retrospectives at the Tate. A new study of Isobel Rawsthorne by Bacon, in which the subject appears in three different guises within the one composition, is the most compelling painting here: muscular and concentrated as a clenched fist. I still find, however, that the excessive facial distortions, though remarkable as painting displays, are too gross and violent for any psychological or formal insights into the sitters.
The Pavilions in the Parks series of one-man open-air displays, under light, expendable, materials, may demonstrate the beginnings of a trend away from dealers' galleries in favour of independent action by artists else- where. Big works are part of the problem and the latest solution, so far as experimental ex- hibition display is concerned, can be seen under the terms of this new scheme at the bottom of Oakley Street, Chelsea.
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