ART
THIS is going to be about " Young Contemporaries " at the R.B.A. Galleries, and I must warn you that it will read rather like a draft Civil Service return. " Young Contemporaries " is an exhibition of work by students from thirty-four art schools in Greater London. It is uneven, sometimes naive, sometimes pedestrian, more often stimulating, never tired, very varied, and quite the best of its kind I have seen. None of the names is known • so you may study the 50o works without preconceptions. If you happen to be knowledge- able about such things, it may be tempting to try to place a work as having come from a particular school—I would guess, for example, that Leo E. Walmsley and Lawrence Hill come from Goldsmith's College; Peter Johnson and Hugh Mackinnon from the Anglo- French Art Centre ; P. Dunbar and R. Hunt from Camberwell— but at such a dangerous game I for one am certainly placing no bets.
There is a considerable quantity of good student painting, straight- forwardly observed and straightforwardly recorded. You might note Nos. 1o5 and 'to by Evelyn Williams; A. W. Bowyer's Crimson Jacket; Victor Freeborn's John-like child on Hogsmill Bridge; or such notes of a moment's perception as After the Rain by Francois Roux, or P. D. Kermode's Hoardings by Night. In many of these, however the material has been insufficiently fashioned to produce a result of any permanence. Claude Harrison, in his double portrait, has attempted something ; but the effect remains rather feathery and lightweight. Norman Adams, Howard Hodgkin, Catherine Beverley, P. Nash, Christopher Mason, James Van Hear and George H. Pearson are amongst those trying to impose some sort of unity upon their subject-matter with varying degrees of success.
Flirtations with every conceivable manner take place shamelessly on every hand. Sometimes true understanding is lacking. Norman Rodgers often seems to borrow his arched distortions from Wyndham Lewis without cause, and No. 207 is perhaps his most successful picture because least forced. Sometimes on the other hand, the digestive juices of these young artists are quite terrifyingly potent. It is really rather disquieting to find the sincerest form of flattery carried to such lengths as has been done by N. B. Town, in his assimilation of Keith Vaughan's vision and technique, by Antony Kerr in_his skilful recollection of Bonnard, or James Taylor in his first-rate pastiche of a 1924-6 Picasso. These are clearly painters of ability, however, as is Hugh Mackinnon, whose red and blue abstract seems neither better nor worse than the bulk of the output of the BazaineLManessier group in Paris. The other big abstract in this room, by Martin Frey, owes something to Klee, but not unpleasantly. Other names which emerge from the crowd as individual talents are Daphne Henke, Peter Foldes, Robin Rae, who contributes some gently surreal work of technical competence, and Ivor Fox, who has turned from a nicely drawn realism to a style derived from Colquhoun (not yet mastered in the human figure).
Excellent lithographs are shown by Kenneth Bale, Hermina Gerstl, Alice M. Lambe, Joan Zeeprat, Alastair Grant, Bernard Cheese, Silvia Cowgill, Robert Tavener and Ronald Jackson. The sculpture on the whole is less lively, but J. P. Turner's diluted Moore (452) is nicely done, Gerald Scott's ambitious group well-considered, and Grant Henke's Two Fishermen completely successful at its level, in its composition and linking of rhythms. This show is very well worth a visit, and the,..ffices will surprise you.
M. H. MIDDLETON.
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