Exhibitions
John Moores (Walker Gallery, Liverpool, till 20 April),
Confused state
Alistair Hicks
andy Nairne glories in the secondary• In his exhibition, book and television series, State of the Art, he raises the critic, the gallery owner and second-rate artist to central stage and with all too few excep- tions fails to talk about the great art being produced today, some of which can be seen at the 15th bi-annual John Moores Liver- pool exhibition.
The John Moores is the only open competition in this country of the highest calibre. This year its awards verge on the ridiculous; there are a good dozen paint- ings that shouldn't have been given wall space. Yet the hanging isn't overcrowded and the visitor is encouraged to look seriously at the many good pictures. Sir John Moores, founder of Littlewoods and the exhibition and chairman of the four-man jury, has boosted many a young painter's career. David Hockney, John Walker and Roger Hilton are previous winners. Victor Pasmore and Patrick Heron entered recent works in gratitude for the aid the prize gave them earlier in their careers. This year's first-prize winner, Tim Head, is unlikely to follow in their foosteps. His mildly amusing pattern of cows is taken and distorted from the side of a milk carton. The joint second prize was given to some equally obvious and synthe- tic imagery laid on in many layers of glaze by Graham Crowley and with great sim- plicity by Kate Whiteford. The net has been cast wide for the ten minor prizes. As Sir John says, 'The jury have, as in my earlier exhibitions, given these awards to artists as yet not fully established.' Sadly only a few of them are really worthy of a mention. Shanti Pan- chal's `Saffron Robe — Guru Kelucharan at Riverside Studios' is a magnificent ancient Indian miniature magnified to suit- able modern museum proportions. It is beautifully painted and its presentation cannot be faulted, but he has hawked this one picture around so much that people are beginning to believe it is the only one he has ever painted. Terry Shave and Brian Chalkley certain- ly deserve their inclusion in the prizes and demonstrate the growing interest among British painters in the qualities of paint. The subject matter of Shave's 'Inferno Storms' is made eminently clear by the violence and alternate seduction of the brushwork. He talks of 'a certain world that exists in his paintings', to which he sometimes feels he is getting close, 'but most of the time all I have are the remnants of the search'. Indeed one can follow his travels in the way the paint gushes, is blown and pushed around the large canvas. The buffeted eye experiences a calm after the storm when it looks away. The exhibition is pegged out by abstract works. Victor Pasmore and Patrick Heron greet the visitor at the bottom of the stairs. Within the main rooms a Bert Irvine, though no new departure for him, out- shines the first two prize-winners, the Crowley and the Head in the same room. At the far end of the exhibition a Gillian Ayres does the same to Katherine Whiteford. Indeed the dry Whiteford shares the long Prince George room with too many strong paintings for its own good. Diagonally opposite the Terry Shave are Works by Terry Setch and Maurice Cock- nll. Setch fuses layers of hot and cold wax to exaggerate the way he brings the haunt- ing nuclear-wasted figures out of the loose canvas. 'Excavations 85-86' may well refer to the probing of his own character in relation to his origins or possible future, but he is also quite literally excavating the act of painting itself. Cockrill's 'Venus and Mars — in the Heat', hanging beside, explores similar themes without using any- thing but oil paints. The struggle of man and woman seizes immediate attention and at first disguises the endless repetition of this battle within the making of the paint- ing itself. A triptych by Robert Mason is the only other painting in the exhibition to bind composition and emotion so tightly together.
This year's John Moores does not give enough emphasis to the important paint- ings within it. Too often weak, badly crafted and only vaguely humorous works rub shoulders with the great, but in com- parison with the three heads of State of the Art it is a model of virtue. It has been made out that the book is by far the best of the three, but I cannot see it. They are all remarkably consistent. It is as though Mr Nairne, who formerly ran the Fine Art programme at the ICA and has just been aPPointed to do the same for the Arts Council, set out to systematically destroy the last threads of interest in the visual arts that linger precariously in this country.
Most British people believe that contem- porary art is a pretentious waste of time. They think that artists, critics, art adminis- trators and gallery owners conspire together to con the foolish rich and the public purse to part with its money. Nairne's Medusa confirms these prejudices with interest. He has presented readers and viewers with a meaningless muddle. He has totally failed to argue his point that 'art is not isolated from everyday life' by throwing everything, unedited, onto the page and screen. Some good art has crept onto the ICA walls, some stimulating thoughts have fallen onto the page, but only as droppings from the sky. He is full of quotes, some illuminating, some so silly that a two-year-old would be ashamed of uttering them. 'Every good idea has already been thought: suffice it only to think it again' — Goethe. 'The word quality is a dangerous word, it's an insi- dious word, it's a word as far as I'm concerned with a negative history' Ingrid Sischy, editor of Artforum. 'The good dealer makes his artist feel important all the year round' — Anthony Fawcett and Jane Withers. Nairne gives these statements equal weight. He leaves us with the conclusion that, 'In the end all art is political in its resistance to the global culture.' It is as though his brain is a sieve and he has poured all his knowledge of the art world through it. The ideas that could wriggle through have been served up to us as some fearful soup. Please don't judge contemporary art by its taste.
Previous page
