Arts
Between the lines
John McEwen
When Peter Phillips arrived from Birmingham at the Royal College of Art in 1960 he responded immediately to the new freedom inherent in American painting, its urban imagery and the professionalism of its art ists. It concurred far more exactly with his OW n visual experience and ambition than did the rural-based and tradition-bound detachment which still pervades too much art teaching even today. Having trained briefly as a commercial artist himself he recognised that the work of many commercial artists was technically more sophisticated and often more creative than that of fine artists (the name alone suggests disdainful superiority), and he admired their constant openness to new technology, an openness that was embodied in the continuous relevance of popular imagery. He began to paint large Pictures of configurations of colour, machine parts, custom car design, animal eMblems and other motorbike insignia in a brash, metallic way ideally suited to the aggression of this iconography. And from the mid-'sixties he increased the appearance °I' mechanical precision by spraying rather than brushing on the paint.
The present show (Waddington 11 till 3 demonstrates all Phillips's preoccupations while revealing a new control of technical effects and a softening of his imagery and style from pop to photo-realist. Two bright and complementary works in a mixture of paints, including one that sprays on as grittily as sandpaper, are succeeded by acrylic and then oil paintings in which a variously coloured grid enlivens the simultaneity of the imposed images it divides. These images become increasingly juxtaPosed, not imposed, in 'M.osaikbild' and 'La bore' both of 1975, and largely disappear altogether along with the grid in a relaxed Painting done this year—the playing cards at its centre are used by Phillips to indulge In some old-fashioned oil and brush nudes hich completes the show. Of these paint ngs and to a lesser extent `La ". Ore are the most successful and the most interesting in terms of future development. In both a new type of Dutch oil paint has neen used to give the colour added depth, and the surface has been sealed off with lacSuer to create an impenetrable matt finish. fhls retains the depth even at close quarters i and wittily detaches the overtly sexual inagery—a beautiful woman in a pin-up Pose adjoined to blow-ups of fingers breaking bread, unwrapped but unbitten chocoiates and a snarling tiger—from the paint tlhself. In focusing attention on technique in IS Way Phillips forces the viewer to look and not to think : the mobile blends of the grid, the empty square filled at its extreme
corner in optical expectation of the continuance of the chocolate box lid in the square below, the way the top edge of the lower canvas in 'Solitaire is the only game in town' beams a drift of paint from the later spray work higher up the canvas. Such delicacies are the essence of Phillips's art—an aesthetic of technique. Gentler colour and more explicit imagery should increase his manipulation of such expertise to the greater advantage of the viewer and the greater appreciation of his work over here in future. Let us hope that is soon. The vagaries of dealing and his own long exile in America and Switzerland cannot excuse the neglect that makes this his first London one-man show of paintings.
Nigel Hall's new work (Felicity Samuel till 9 April) consists of a print, some charcoal drawings and eight sculptures of variously jointed (never welded) and screwed aluminium rods, each work bolted at a single point to the wall. Hall has always been interested in the way the spectator's movement alters his visual understanding, and while the pieces here often cast spectacular shadows (especially at Felicity Samuel where the lights are too bright) or appear to deny physical laws by the improbability of their balance, neither impression should distract the viewer from the real point, which is to study each piece from as many angles as possible, most rewardingly in sequence, so as to discover their subtle deployment of volume and shape.
In 'Precinct I' and `Green Minus' this is perhaps less overt than in the later rectangular pieces but nevertheless a progression can be traced, say, in 'Precinct I' where a flaglike rectangle twists from the vertical of the wall till its zenith rests horizontally to the floor. In '90°' and 'Quarter' rectangles move as suggested through a right angle from the bolted base to the precariously poised zenith of the final side: four rectangles in the case of '90o' which, if viewed from right to left, reveal a cascade of triangles before returning to the stillness of their original demarcation. Intermediary works such as 'Slow', a larger piece whose wide rectangles take more time to be moved into volumetric outline and linear overlap, and the autonomous areas of 'Cross', however, are both less in
terestingly related to the wall than the latest 'Black Hole' and 'Trip' (an unhappy abbreviation of triptych).
'Black Hole' is a large, bold polygon fussily overjointed down its left side and attached to an L-shape on its right as if not to get too close to an Ellsworth Kelly shape, which nonetheless brings the incursion of the wall into an ambiguous interplay with the piece on a scale that Hall has not attempted before. `Trip', a small work also cut into by the wall (or is the wall cut into by it ?), undergoes a more extreme change of character, from brittle complexity (if you approach it from the back gallery) to suave openness, than any other piece in the show. The drawings carry through various conjoined elements to their systematic though sometimes random conclusions in a dissimilar but obviously related way, the print surprisingly being more successful because the weight of the press has brought the unmarked paper into relief thus giving the surface more contrast and texture.
For all its intelligence and elegance of means Hall's work has a tendency to overrefinement and therefore tastefulness. Elements of 'Black Hole' and the compactness of `Trip' suggest an awareness of this and a determination to make the work more rugged as well as more simple. In the progression of this exhibition there is no reason to suppose he will not succeed.
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