ART
Tantralized
Evan Anthony
Spike Milligan's ob sessive need to get into the act apart, the Hayward Gallery has a really smashing show on view. For a day or two, it was all touch and go — threats of withdrawal by the artists, and offended sensibilities by fish lovers and fish eaters alike — but the first crop of catfish have been privately shocked to death and devoured, and all is now right With the social conscience of the world and the Arts Council.
So what else is new? William Wegman's video-tapes are not yet on view, and Robert Irwin has had second thoughts about covering the floor with sheets of polyethelene (he claims that his display is intended to carry on a ' dialogue' with space, not with a gallery full of other people's pictures etc), but there is enough left of the 11 Los Angeles Artists and the Tantra exhibitions to justify a visit to the South Bank. It is a richly imaginative show, and the mixture of offerings would indicate that in Los Angeles it is Permissible to do your own thing. The catalogue makes a noble attempt to explain what the gentlemen are on about, and, if not wholly convincing or clear in some instances, it is generally informative and intelligent. Larry Bell's glass partitions, with their neutral grey coating, should influence the interior design industry, offering some lovely ideas for organizing space with an intriguing walk-through look. Maxwell Hendler's painstakingly rendered paintings look like modern Vermeers — not an easy accomplishment — and Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park' series of large abstract canvases give sufficient visual stimulation to make you appreciate the Practice along with the theory.
Sharing the billing at the Hayward, the Tantra exhibition can hardly be considered subordinate. It is an exotic and erotic display of Indian art, Tantra being described (in case you didn't know) as a form of Indian religious feeling, based Upon meditative and ritual acts, " strongly oPposed to the more familiar negative asceticisms of India." I should say so! Art masters planning on taking the kiddies along on a school trip should be prepared, afterwards, to discuss at least fifty positions for sexual intercourse. (It will Probably be all for the good, setting the record straight for children weaned on drawings in Oz.) It is all in glorious colour, and the sculpture, paintings, and tapestries are quite extraordinary examples of an art
of which the West has only recently become aware." A new gallery, of which you may be pleased to be made aware, is the Court Lodge Gallery, located near Farningham, Kent, and part of a house dating from the eleventh century. The country setting is beautiful, and it is well worth the hour's jotirney from London, particularly for the opening show of paintings, drawings, and prints by Philip Sutton, a very positive artist, painting bright, well-composed pictures. There is more than a touch of Matisse in his work, but there is also a large amount of Sutton. Rebehah's Flowers, and Flushing, Falmouth are but two refreshing examples of the artist's joy in picture-making.
Nigel Lambourne probably enjoys his work too, and if his pleasantly pornographic nudes sometimes look a trifle cold, there is little doubt that this artist is a technician of a high order. His work on show at the Editions Graphiques Gallery, Clifford Street, is an interesting mixture of drawings effortlessly tossed off, and those done with loving care. All are the work of a first-rate talent.
The rest of a ' goodie ' week for me included Josef Herman's exceptional drawings and paintings at Roland, Browse and Delbanco, Cork Street, and Jim Haldane's unusual use of crayon, pencil and ink at the Workshop Gallery, Lambs Conduit Street. Herman attempts to universalize his peasants and their environment, and the mood is earthy and life-giving without being sentimental. Haldane's drawings are bizarre caricatures of life — children's drawings in the hands of the knowing, sophisticated adult: a bit cynical and a trifle perverted, but very entertaining.
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