Figure it out
ART BRYAN ROBERTSON
It's agreeable this week to move away from all those promising young tyros towards some dis- tinguished, and still disconcerting, older painters: Ivon Hitchens is now seventy-two, Sidney Nolan is in his mid-fifties—which is always the decisive stage in any artist's evo- lution.
At Waddin&ton's, the Hitchens make a cheerful initial impact, followed by the odd disclosure that their apparent robustness is only on the surface: the colour in these paint- ings is brilliant, high-keyed, full of light but with a delicately fragile two-dimensional effervescence which makes all the shapes and condensations of light and shade seem to float. As the subjects are mostly recumbent nudes in traditionally flowing composure, the effect is what I meant by disconcerting: a static strategy is undermined and splendidly dispersed by the tactics of movement, sometimes very sharp and lively. Some colours are 'quicker flowing' than others, but so vigorous and concentrated are the brushmarks in these flashing, gleam- ing paintings that all the colour works in this way. Impossible not to enjoy such ebullience.
Impossible, also, not to wish that Hitchens had not disrupted his drawing. He can draw, all right, but in a slightly slick and soapy early art moderne manner—the manner in which Gill or. Gaudier longingly confront Matisse, who, as usual, eludes their grasp. Which is per- haps why No. 17, called Pink Shore, Blue Boy, is so successful, for this contains no figures and the 'drawing' -has evaporated into floating concentrations of creamy white, pink or blue paint put on with that lazy indolence which makes Hitchens one of the best painters now working in Europe.
Two minor issues require a word. It is Hitchens's privilege to paint laterally most Of the time if he wants to, but these endlessly re- peated, long, horizontal canvases are becoming a shade wearisome and, more crucially I sus- pect, make for a certain complacency in this otherwise stunning artist's work. A little dis- ruption here might present new problems re- quiring new answers. At the moment, Hitchens is too rapidly and busily supplying answers to rather well-worn questions. Lastly, Hitchens's work, ever since I can remember, has been dis- figured by wholly inappropriate frames, rang- ing from a mouth-watering, shepherd's-pie- crust moulding to the present, almost worse, Scottish shortbread and thin porridge. These Paintings are mainly about space, so why box them in these bourgeois relics? Enter Nolan, at the New London, with the strongest and best show for years. What a delight to say so, after his spell in the doldrums —in this case a rather slippery and rubbery dexterity which for too long has effectively buried his imagery. As a painter Nolan is the reverse of Hitchens, for whom the image is a pretext for some intelligently realised com- mentaries on light, space, perspective and colour. For Nolan, the image is literally every- thing, and the means taken to perfect it must be so concentrated and distilled into the image as to be invisible: Nolan's scenes appear, wraith-like, as magic-lantern slides suddenly flashed on to a white screen.
When the finger or cloth or mop painting technique is too messy or dispersed, or too tricksy, it conceals the image instead of illuminating it and acts as a barrier between us and the content. Beautiful brushwork would be another thing, but with Nolan a ruth- less pounce on the image is all: there are no side-issues. The images- in the present show have such a conviction, such an exactitude— figures writing in hell, a camel floating in a desert with flowers blushing through the sepia gloom like wounds, a giant billabong swamp with shimmering water and peeled bark trees —that they nearly all work with maximum force and impact. There is a notably eccentric and inventive series of abstracted images, all blandly called 'paintings,' which are like tribal relics suddenly becoming animate or taking on the characteristics of whoever last wore them. These are among Nolan's most concise and brilliant works: haunting, economical, non-self-indulgent, and vaguely unnerving— like a jellyfish turning into a crab. The Inferno is a powerful and equally disturbing work.
Previous page
