Exhibitions
Leonard Rosoman (Fine Arts Society, till 2 November) Sergei Chepik (Roy Miles, till 9 November) Trevor Bell (Gillian Jason, till 2 November) Ian Davenport (Waddington Galleries, till 27 October)
Capricious climates
Giles Auty
Awalk round London's art galleries in sweltering heat last week made me reflect on the new fickleness of our climate. When last did a mid-October stroll down Bond Street prove hotter than in equivalent streets in Johannesburg or Karachi?
The capriciousness of our art climate is more familiar, of course, but can make one equally hot under the collar. Here Leonard Rosoman strikes me as an excellent exam- ple of the accomplished artist who ought to be better known. In his seventies now, he studied before the last war, in which he made his mark as a war artist, at the Royal Academy Schools and at the Central School. Rosoman's work is deft and dap- per. It is also quirky, informed and intelli- gent. He is the kind of artist only Britain could produce — or neglect. His paintings in acrylic on canvas have the lightness almost of watercolour. The artist plays tricks with space and proportion in a way that refreshes both eye and spirit. He is an excellent portrait painter, observing the human race with wry humour. Animals are also a natural target for the wit and kindness of his scrutiny; his own unusual breed of cat is subject now of a skilful and sophisticated series of paintings. Like the late Edward Bawden, Rosoman is prob- ably too good-natured an artist to excite the interest of most present-day pontifiers, who prefer their artists gloomy. David Hockney is just one of those indebted to Rosoman for his instruction in graphic skills. The latter's large-scale show is at the Fine Arts Society (148 New Bond Street, W1).
Rosoman's literal and emotional light- ness of touch could not be in greater contrast to the somewhat heavy-handed symbolism of Sergei Chepik, a youngish Russian wh6 is finding the Western world much to his liking since leaving the USSR two years ago. However, his current ex- hibition at Roy Miles (29 Burton Street, W1) cannot but seem odd to Western sensibilities. Chepik's work loses dignity in combining too many kinds and sources of symbolism; our relative sophistication in the West means we can grasp symbolic meanings quite quickly. Chepik parades an extraordinary stylistic eclecticism which embraces Bosch and Brueghel hardly less than Braque and Picasso. One also en- counters faint echoes of his fellow Rus- sians, Repin and Plastov. The artist is technically able, as can be seen in such a landscape as `Plios on the Volga' in which he has got on with painting in what, for all I know, may be his own natural manner. I explained Edward Seago's extraordinary popular success once by suggesting he produced precisely the kind of paintings his buyers would like to have made themselves if they had shared his abilities. Mr Chepik has a similar market at his feet, which must appropriate to the tone of the city. Its presentation of Gluck's Alceste justified be especially welcome after the privations of the USSR. His next step is more problematic: whether to look into Western conceptions of art more closely or simply to proceed in his singular and idiosyncratic fashion.
Pursuing my thesis on the fickleness of fame, I draw your attention to two further exhibitions, one by a young artist who is current critical flavour of the month, the other by a painter who occupied precisely the same position 32 years ago. The latter is Trevor Bell, a British-born abstract painter who has lived since the Sixties in Florida. Bell was the first artist to be taken on by Leslie Waddington when that dealer opened in Cork Street in 1958. Bell is much less in the news here these days but is showing his canvases of complex shape now at Gillian Jason (40 Inverness Street, NW1), albeit in the relative obscurity of Camden Town. Bell's former role at Wad- dington Galleries (11 Cork Street, W1) is filled now by a later hopeful, Ian Daven- port. The latter is only in his mid-twenties yet is attracting the kind of eulogies from the more modish critics that Bell received himself at one time. Davenport produces large, often monochrome canvases by let- ting household paints run their length and breadth, abetting this by skilful tipping. My critical colleagues' comments notwith- standing, Davenport's all-black paintings seem to me little more than attractive designer chic, while their oily, grey-green fellows are more redolent of garage than garret. Probably, the acclaimed Mr Daven- port need never enter a garret again yet cannot, as an artist, as yet hold a candle to the not-so-acclaimed Mr Bell who trod exactly the same path all those years ago. Fame's a funny business.
Leonard Rosoman's 'Thomas a Becket, a Hawk and a Duck in the Mill Race', 1987-89
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