Art
Stripped down
John McEwen
Allen Jones took quite a caning when his sculptures of stylised playgirls coincided with the opening campaign of Women's Lib. That he is still smarting is obvious from the covers to the catalogue of his new exhibition of paintings at Waddington (till I May): the front reproduces a Peter Arno-ish cartoon of two girls in lingerie with the tag 'Then he says, an artist's gotta feel things', and the back a quote he once read on the reverse of a menu 'Sans Peur et Sans Reproche'.
Years ago Jones said it was the formal shapes that suggested the subject matter of his paintings and this holds just as true today. The figurative element does not so much evoke a mood or tell a story as introduce the viewer to the more painterly qualities of the work: the invention of its colour, the balance of its construction. Erotic garments have always interested him for the way in which they draw attention to much more than themselves. Similarly in his paintings he has used erotic imagery to involve the spectator as spontaneously as possible so that he can see other aspects of the painting with the same freshness of response, and thereby gain something from it that he might have missed had he not initial/Y been shocked into a heightened state of attention. By one means or another Jones is always seeking to engage the viewer, to cajole him into the participation necessary if these and indeed most modern paintings are to be appreciated to any worthwhile extent.
Thus in a majority of the works at Waddington the viewer is invited by the heads or foreshortened legs at the base of the canvas to witness the show above as part of the same audience: the one in the picture looking at the act—the act itself suggested by glimpses of legs, arms, cleavages and lips to convey the experience of seeing, sporadic points of interest rather than a photographic totality—the viewer of the painting looking at this but also at the picture itself as a painting performance. The arm in the top right-hand corner of so many of these latest works not only pushes back the stage curtain but also the style it is painted in, an echo of the pure abstraction that banished figurative painting in the 'fifties. That the abstraction of the curtain often dominates the canvas makes the reference doubly ironic. 'Tall Average Petite', the largest work on view at a width of twelve feet, is especially diagnostic: the protruding legs of an audience—the single hand and the blue-stockinged thighs are particularly accomplished passages of naturalistic painting—inviting us to participate in the performance beyond, which parades from an aura of figurative activity on the left to the pure coloration of the right, held as a curtain by the formal balance of the arm in the top right-hand corner. Of course Jones has long been acclaimed as an oil painter for his colour and technical virtuosity, and happily there is no lack of either here. In fact the figurative element continues to dwindle at the expense of thicker daubs of paint and more vigorous handling, due in some part to his recent adoption of a gel that can be mixed to prevent oil paint from reticulating. This Ingredient can be smeared in the semi-transparency of its original form or used to enable unprecedented weights of paint to be dragged down the canvas like plaster, thus energising the surface of his picture while extending the range of ambiguity he constantly employs between surface and con
trived depth, real and surreal. In 'Back Beauty' for instance the smeared gel is both an independent mark on the surface of the
picture and an impression of a diaphanoUs material shrouding the girl's silhouette. Note, too, the brushed, not sprayed, modulation of the drum on which she stands. Sprayed surfaces always look out of
focus. Another beautiful effect, this time achieved with a rag, is the feathering of the paint in 'Downbeat'. The colour here .as elsewhere shows a new preoccupation With variations of pink and rose. The eroticism of these paintings is less Pronounced than before, the figurative features pushed into the wings or smeared over as the paint is increasingly emphasised. Jones appears to be approaching some new form of dramatic synthesis where props, Which is what his performers have increasingly become, and painted-in audience are dispensed with altogether. If he succeeds he will be doing the best work of his Career. The present show suggests he is three-quarters of the way there.
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