The Whitechapel Style
ART
lasuaTING is becoming far too interesting, r nowadays,' said Richard Smith just before he left for the Venice Biennale, and the current Whitechapel exhibition of The New Genera- tion : 1966, which follows his own one-man showing there, bears out the point. Of the thirteen artists now on show, only two or three have had the courage not to be 'interesting.'
The New Generation idea, as conceived by Bryan Robertson in 1964 with the generous support of the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, was an excellent one when it first appeared. At that time there was no paddock for new talent except the 'Young Contemporaries' shows, and the inter- national limelight had not yet been turned on what the American pop song calls 'Swinging England.' Where would young, unrecognised talents show their form if not at Whitechapel, and why not an annual group show selected by the director, the object of which would be six prizes—five trips to Europe and one to America?
But times have changed and the New Genera- tion shows have been partly responsible for changing them. London artists are searched out raster than they can breed by eager New York dealers, and a handful of go-ahead London galleries now produce a number of unknown artists each year. The Stuyvesant New Generation show has recognised the change and the six travel prizes are now all awarded for trips to America: what is more, the choice does not neces- sarily descend on those who have missed com- mercial or critical attention. This year, at least three of the artists are in their thirties and many have been exhibited in a number of group shows. Several have had one-man shows as well.
Despite a more sympathetic atmosphere, how- ever, this latest selection of eleven painters and two sculptors chosen by Mr Robertson seems to be straining desperately to create an effect, without knowing quite why or what it is after. Most of them have in common a certain fun-loving brashness and extrovert frivolity that go with the current scene: they are super-
ficially more professional and finished than their predecessors. But there is also a kind of slick polish that carries with it suspicions of fixed atti- tudes rather than of genuine searches being made. In setting out to find the undiscovered outside the pigeon-hole of 'isms,' is it possible that the Whitechapel has inadvertently created its own art `ism'?
Surrealism colours the work of several artists. and Douglas Binder and Colin Cina both recall the 'thirties. Binder paints bright, globular float- ing figurations of a Disney-land fantasy world and Cina's squiggly forms in a sea of flat colour have, on his own admission, an indirect link with Kandinsky. Erick Gadsby appears sure in style, with his organic shapes which biomorphically swell and expand and change in a melting spec- trum of jazzy tones; they remind one of those huge cinema organs which played coloured lights in movie-house intervals.
Of all the artists on show, the sculptor Francis Morland alone seems to have achieved some balance between a fresh vision and intricate formal problems. With a minimum of inessen- tials, he closes in on enlargements of three- dimensional painted coils. Like a Lilliputian's view of twisted rope-strands arbitrarily snipped off, these gigantic interlocking forms have a presence which is both commanding and con- vincing. Moreover, their 'interesting' quality is the by-product rather than the object of the exercise.
Mark Lancaster is one artist in the • New Generation who is definitely determined not to be interesting. His large areas of unprimed cotton canvas are relieved only by simplified and re- duced geometric forms painted evenly, and at times almost imperceptibly. Colours are pale greens, pinks, beiges and pale blues. Lancaster, who had an impressive one-man exhibition last October, is allied to the 'cool' group of New York artists who have set out to remove all personality from painting, to avoid biographical details and trade-mark idioms, and perhaps also to do away with too much spectator-interest.
MARIO AMAYA
Previous page
