ART
Lustful sibyls
EVAN ANTHONY
What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice? Not on your nellie, as far as Horst Janssen is concerned. Girls, I fear, undergo a scrutiny that surgeon visitors to the Marlborough Fine Art Gallery in Old Bond Street should find fascinating. Parts of an anatomy (some you might even recognise, others that may be part of a kit to be used in making the new artificial man we are told is on the way) are subjected to the most rigorous tests: the pushing and pulling and picking and probing seen in Janssen's painfully erotic drawings made me empathise and feel the discomfort usually associated with being kicked in the—well, you name it
This German artist, having his first show- ing in England, is a remarkable draughtsman, using mainly pencil and coloured chalk. He suggests to me an unwholesome Gerald Scarfe, and his sophisticated doodling builds pictures that both attract and repel. Tiny Nightmare is indeed just that—someone's navel (possibly?) is being examined by the snout of an anteater (perhaps?); Slight Pain- fulness is exquisite titular under-statement, what with a deformed hand (maybe?) pull- ing on a nipple (yes, definitely) while some- thing else seems to be going on in front of the lady's face.
But then, these drawings may be 'for the market'—or, as Janssen himself writes (refer- ring to himself in the third person): 'The subject matter of these drawings conforms to the demands of the market. It is determined by the demands of those people who think that they must possess pictures and who can also afford to pay for them. And in the par- ticular case of Janssen, these people like the slightly crippled gnomes, the lustful little sybils [sic], the gaping cat faces and such like.' Actually, the drawings not 'for the market' are not perceptibly more wholesome, but somebody's Aunty (perhaps the artist's) and one or two of the self-portraits seem
Hayley Mills and Michael Denison interestingly straightforward.
If you have £500 to £900 to spare, go along and see for yourself what lustful little sibyl you'd like to hang on your wall—but not if you've just had, or are about to have, an operation.
I wouldn't expect the students exhibiting at the Royal Academy in the 'Young Con- temporaries' show to be as sucessfully single- minded as Horst Janssen, but I'm afraid that the joky cynical mood of the exhibition doesn't really pay off, being neither funny nor biting enough. In proportion to the amount of canvas and floor space used, the aesthetic yield is disappointingly thin. Even allowing for student iconoclasm and experi- mentation, I was 'turned off' by the 'this is going to blow your mind' air that pervades the show. It may be inevitable that in a student group show the artist feels he must assert himself; the trouble is that too many of the contributors were similarly motivated, producing a 'party piece' collection, smack- ing of cleverness but devoid of personality. But there is some evidence of talent in the show, and once the problems of style and purpose are solved, a few of the artists (Les Matthews, Ivy Smith, Peter Schlessinger, and Janet Ann Humphrey have entered likeable paintings) may find a niche for themselves.
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