Exhibitions
Paul Storey
(Jason & Rhodes, till 15 October)
Complex issue
Giles Auty
After five years or more of seldom relieved gloom in the art market one must hope that a new partnership of enterprising dealers — Gillian Jason and Benjamin Rhodes — may herald better times for the commercial gallery world in London. Their first joint exhibition is certainly an unusual one, by a former student at Birmingham and the Royal College, Paul Storey. Storey is a figurative artist in his late thirties who lives in an obscure hamlet in rural France between Agen and Cahors. It was there that I visited him in late June in conditions of great heat. The affairs of British art could hardly have seemed further away. Storey has not exhibited anywhere for five years and lives in circumstances of consid- erable artistic isolation. On the other hand, it would be hard to imagine an artist whose work has less to do with existing orthodox- ies anyway. Strangely, viewing Storey's large and highly complex figure paintings in an old stone barn while swallows flew in and out did not add to their oddity. I shall not see the new work placed on the rather flatter walls of Jason and Rhodes (4, Burlington Place, W1) as I will be in Aus- tralia for the opening and most of the dura- tion of Storey's show.
To say that these are idiosyncratic paint- ings is almost an understatement. The 35 selected for the show range in size from the 11ft by 11ft 'The Virgin in Glory' to paint- ings of little more than lft square. But the iconography is consistent. Much of its source lies in painting from Italy or the Low Countries from the 15th-century onwards: limbs, faces, gestures, stances and accoutrements are borrowed freely from artists as various as Piero della Francesca, Uccello, Mantegna and Cranach and the eclectic whole is then re-cycled to demon- strate what are primarily legendary or reli- gious themes. Anachronisms and distortions are rife in a symbolic system that could provide a field-day for psychoan- alysts. Intestines spill and intertwine, limbs are elongated or shortened at will and are often double-jointed, severed tree trunks extend branches in supplication, distant futuristic cities seem to have been founded in the Appenines, skies range from the primeval to the post-atomic. It is tempting to say at this point: 'What does it all mean?' But is specific meaning a necessary adjunct to symbolic painting? In previous centuries it would surely have been argued that it was, but we live in the late 20th-cen- tury now so that the cult of the irrational can boast a long museum pedigree already. We need think no further here than the metaphysical paintings of de Chirico or the surrealism of Ernst and Dail. The complex- ity of some of Storey's figurative work might find direct comparison within British art of this century only with Stanley Spencer's Burghclere Chapel paintings. But Spencer's great symbolic narrative has rela- tively clear meaning which the diligent can extract. With Storey I am less convinced altogether; often he seems in danger of falling between horses. There seems a risk among our younger artists as a whole of imagining that idiosyncratic expression must be interesting in itself. There is an element of self-indulgence here which is worrying, a criticism which applies also to a great deal of surrealist practice. I believe significant art of any kind is never arbitrary in either form or content. Yet where art claims to be irrational, how on earth can we tell?
I believe Storey's art would benefit great- ly from the kind of specific objectives imposed on quattrocento artists by their patrons. The stricter the regime, the less self-conscious and thus probably the more valid any expression of artistic individuality. Surely such a principle underlies the train- ing of artists in other disciplines — ballet dancers and musicians, for instance? But the world of contemporary visual art seems not to believe in either humility or disci- pline. Finally it loses credibility as a result.
I salute Paul Storey for his individuality and welcome sense of independence from contemporary art fashions and hail Jason and Rhodes for their enterprise in exhibit- ing him. The show will entertain end sur- prise many. Somehow I do not expect too many other young painters to be essaying works on subjects such as Diomedes, Telemachus, Theotokos, Agamemnon or St Christopher in the weeks to come.
The Hermit, 1991-94, by Paul Storey
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