Art
Youthful promise
Evan Anthony
I can't say that I actually noticed anyone nudging anyone else and remarking, "And he's just a boy," but it seems that at the age of forty-three Robyn Denny is the youngest artist to be given a retrospective show at the Tate. At least one acquaintance has expressed irritation at the term ' retrospective,' asking why it couldn't simply be considered an 'exhibition.' Well, a show by any other name is a show, and if such academic questions bother you, cheer up— you may be forty-three yourself one day, and won't it be comforting to know that in certain circles you will still be considered a stripling.
There is a distinct aura of whiz-kiddery surrounding Denny's presentation, and the catalogue is grimly determined to signal its significance: "The author [of the notes], Robert Kudielka, is German and a trained philosopher." (As opposed to being an untrained philosopher?) Maybe it does make a change, but have a read and see if you survive, let alone get through, Herr Kudielka's in-depth study of every grunt and groan made by Denny, and by others about Denny. "Probably," writes Kudielka of David Britt, who translated his essay, "I shall be the only person who can ever fully appreciate the skill and sensitivity of his translation," Probably, but if you do, will you be a wiser, worthier person, prepared for the awesome task of looking at the oeuvre? Should you be left with enough energy and confidence to react unselfconsciously, you will be rewarded: the pictures are marvellous.
Denny's faithfulness to the abstract expressionist cause has paid off handsomely for him, and for us. If he is in a rut, as some say (some will say anything), the rut is both interesting and attractive, and seems in no danger of caving in from Denny's continuing excavation. Like Bernard Cohen and clever Andy Warhol, Denny is a man who gets hold of an idea and seems to wring the very life out of it, but does so with such intelligence and skill that the subtle variations on single themes make an art of repetition and juxtaposition. Those colours, so brilliantly mixed and arranged, provide continual surprises in the context of a Denny painting. The concepts are cool, the results throbbingly warm, inviting close and repeated examination.
Not quite so absorbing, though almost as tenacious, Deanna Petherbridge's drawings at the Angela Flowers Gallery in Portland Mews are admirable, albeit, alas, boring. Wielding a mean inking pen, this Pretorian has some original ideas about perspective, creating mazes of building foundations and circular patternings, but despite her techni cal ability to draw lines closer and closer together, I am compelled to draw the line between appreciation and appreciation — that is to say, Deanna Petherbridge's mechanical drawings impress me much the same way as the performances of jugglers: I am impressed that they manage to keep everything in the air, but it seems to little purpose.
As for Norman Gilbert at the Ansdell Gallery in Monmouth Street, he is an artist who has latched on to a method instead of developing a style. His pictures are of friends and family and fruits and flowers; the colours are bright and bilious, and the ' draw me' outlining seems a weak solution to the question of what to do with the occasionally engaging patterning he uses here and there. There is a touch of the ' sophisticated primitive' in , the pictures, but they are all, unfortunately, reminders of artists who do the stuff better.
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