Unnatural history
BRYAN ROBERTSON
Graham Sutherland is still a painter haunted by darkness, decay, and the bizarre verging on the horrific; a visionary, in the sense of Blake or Radon. His latest invention is a magnificent `Bestiary,' in which paintings of singular rich- ness and compression have subsequently been turned into lithographs using the most advanced and precious (in its good meaning) technical processes. They make a fine show at the Marl- borough gallery; and confirm what has become tantalisingly clear since his show at the Tate, in the early 'fifties, that Sutherland has shown all too rarely in London.
The general sense of Sutherland's work is also still accompanied, for me at least, by hopeful expectations of some extraordinary work or series of works which might, once and for all, remove the shadow that lies across his reputation and confirm him as a weightier artist than critical opinion usually allows. He is a superb decorator—again, this word is used in the best sense—with a heraldiC or emblematic feeling for colour; if his range of feeling is narrow, he retains a liveliness of in- vention inside those limits which is only occa- sionally dulled by repetition. And the bestiary strengthens my feeling that Sutherland con- tinuously presents us, over the years, with the dramatis personae of some huge dramatic tableau which still eludes him : we are given characters, in dread isolation, but still await a complex play of relationships in some grander work.
Apart from their power and beauty, these animal, reptile and insect studies are a huge treat to eyes accustomed to the blandness of Liquatex and polyvynil emulsion. Sutherland's colour glows and blazes from the walls like medieval stained glass. It is rare to find a whole series of sharply realised and modelled crea- tures projected with such intensity of colour and tonal subtlety, free of that surface con- formity which makes all but the best recent abstract painting so monotonous. They recall Picasso's illustrations for Buffon but retain their independent life. The Gallery glows and flames with variety of mood and complex gradations of light and darkness: Sutherland brings a rich intensity to his seminars in erosion and rapacity.
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