Art
Glimpses
John McEwen
Nigel Henderson, retrospective of paintings, collages and photographs (Serpentine Gallery [Arts Council] till 29 May; John Hansard Gallery, The Univer- sity, Southampton, 14 June to 9 July; The Minories, Colchester, July/August) Leon Vilaincour, paintings 1968-83 (Serpentine Gallery [Arts Council]till 30
May) John Hovland, new paintings (Waddington Galleries, 34 and 4 Cork Street, WI, till 21 May)
Nigel Henderson is something of an English art-world legend. He was born in 1917, the son of an athletic English gentleman of independent means and a mother who had once been a young hopeful on the minor music hail circuit. The mar- riage broke up in 1924, Mr Henderson opt- ing for the Hurlingham Club, Mrs Hender- son for the world of the private presses. She came to the notice of Nancy Cunard and from 1938 until the beginning of the war ran Peggy Guggenheim's gallery in Cork Street. In his most formative years, therefore, the boy Henderson was hobnob- bing with the likes of Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp and even, in 1938, shared an ex- hibition with Picasso, Braque and Gris. After the war this artistic sophistication landed him in the vanguard of English in- novators. Through teaching, exhibitions and lectures he was particularly influential in the Fifties, his unsnobbish interest in ephemera and the popular arts, his quasi- scientific and inter-disciplinary inquiries —
notably in photography — inspiring younger men like Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton, who in turn assisted in clearing the road of academicism to the benefit of Sixties artists, pop and other- wise.
Henderson, at least as far as England is concerned, was a key figure in this loosen- ing of the conventions. But the very variety of his interest, the intellectual restlessness which continues to make him a much regarded teacher, is shown at the Serpentine to work against his best interests as an art- ist. Only in photography does he truly suc- ceed in being his own man, and then spasmodically: a straight photograph of a Bethnal Green pub scene shows that he can rise above observant documentation to rest an image of timeless significance from a fleeting moment; and two photo-collages entitled 'Head of a Man' memorably mum- mify macro and micro ways of seeing; but as a potter, a painter, a paster-up of memorabilia he looks like a man indulging a hobby. If only he had stuck more to photography, impure or simple, instead of letting himself be 'a bloody bedouin', as he puts it — though 'adolescent' as a descrip- tion could surely serve, less flatteringly, just as well. Like other prodigies of the Thirties in England — Auden, Spender, et al — he has a juvenile quality: 'All the same I wonder if I shouldn't have emulated Dad and kept Mum? I sometimes feel I'm all tor- que.' No, he surely should not — but in the annals of his post-war time it seems an equal surety that he will be honoured as a catalyst more than as an artist.
Leon Vilaincour is 60, was born in Poland but has lived here for many years. His selection with Henderson is under- standable, in that both of them like dislocating their compositions by painting over certain features, so that the imagery tends to be glimpsed. In Vilaincour what we glimpse between dotted screens of paint is a series of tableaux of military history Napoleon to the fore — done in the style of a schoolboy imitating a frontispiece by `Job' or another of the famous illustrators of this kind of romance. The effect is one of kitsch, without a whiff of redeeming humour; but from the catalogue it would seem that the intention is as high and mighty as can be imagined. It should be noted, however, that the catalogue has been con- cocted by two of his teaching colleagues at Chelsea School of Art.
John Hoyland is king of the castle as far as freely handled abstract painting goes in this country, and reminds us of the fact with his latest exhibition. No one here mixes colour and technique with more style or assurance. Hoyland holds unapologetically to the mainstream, the international current of this kind of art, steering in this exhibi- tion, as in his last, closer to the European than the American tradition. There is col- our palette-knifed on as thick as butter in the manner of de Stael in the Fifties a sug- gestion of totem figures out of Miro, scumbled noses/mountains reminiscent of Hoyland's German near contemporary, the 47-year-old Horst Antes, and so on. The work shows an increased variety, while con- tinuing to display the greater freedom and apparent ease of method that seem the un- conscious result of his having moved to a larger studio. Titles conjure moods and memories. As usual there are glamorous and easy to appreciate paintings like the green and black 'Kilkenny Cats' (some- what similar to the work that won him the John Moores Prize last November) and slower, less beguiling ones like the murky `Whispering'. The overall effect, however, remains one of transition, most obviously illustrated by his tinkering uncertainty with motifs — particularly a recent and irresolute blob of a circle.
A unique contemporary art event takes place next weekend (20-23 May) in the form of the 3rd Bath Festival Contemporary Art Fair. Founded and organised, at no profit to himself, by the art-loving chairman of the Pitman Press in Bath, Antony Rowe, it differs from foreign art fairs in being designed primarily for the benefit of the public and not the trade. This year the Fair is sponsored by John Menzies as part of their 150th anniversary celebrations. Thirty three galleries have been invited to take part — including Browse & Darby, Piccadilly, Crane Kalman, Christie's Contemporary Art and, among those from Scotland, Richard Demarco — enabling the work of over 300 contemporary artists to be seen. The Fair, run as an adjunct to the two-week musical festival, is open daily at the Assembly Rooms, 10.30-7, admission £1 (inclusive of full-colour catalogue).
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