Exhibitions
Gillian Ayres (Royal Academy, till 2 March)
Feast of colour
Andrew Lambirth
The art of Gillian Ayres (born 1930) resists tidiness, it's not well-mannered, but it's brimful of life. The imagery is intensely personal, organic more than geometric, vibrant in colour, cascading with energy. It's like the emptying-out of some vast abstract cornucopia. Some of the paintings recall the shapes licked into a sand beach by the retreating tide, all shallow pools and hummocks. Others, more recent, suggest fruit forms; elsewhere are stars and suns. But rather than referring directly to specif- ic things, these are primarily painted marks to be seen and felt as such; also in relation to other marks and gestures and colours. The experience is a physical and emotional one, full of dramatic visual incident.
Many of these paintings are like portraits of a particular moment — an expression of personality and mood, the shaping and ordering of paint on canvas or board, the formulation of a life on a particular day, the day on which the picture was finished. `Cumuli' of 1959, for example, is like a tan- gled bunch of gorgeous flowers laid out rather haphazardly on brown paper prior to being wrapped. It has a lasting charm if not the depth of later pictures — neither of paint nor of association. The recent work is more densely populated, all dynamic, teem- ing surfaces, achieving the ultimate miracle of a surprisingly well-ordered abstract com- position that is not merely pattern, not just pure decoration (though it is immensely, confidently and surgingly decorative), but work that satisfies deeper longings and needs.
The titles, which Ayres evidently enjoys bestowing, could be misleading: 'A Belt of Straw and Ivy Buds'? 'Sucked-Up Sun- slips'? 'Ring Fancy's Knele'? They're given after the painting is finished, not intended to provide a clue to its subject, though they do inevitably bring a flavour of their own. How to avoid thinking of Becket when looking at 'End Game'? And 'Suddenly Last Summer' at once conjures an image of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor in an anguished tropical garden. No doubt these things aren't relevant to Ayres's intentions, but they may be less diverting than the beckonings of peripheral vision, and are infinitely preferable to calling a canvas 'Abstract with Blue and Orange' or `Untitled 477'.
Ayres works fast, piling wet paint on wet, with intervals of lengthy speculation and assessment. A picture may take months or years to evolve, but this should not be evi- dent to the viewer. Many artists make the means by which they've achieved their ends visible as part of the art work. Not so Ayres, who aims at a sense of spontaneity and effortlessness which is quite breathtak- ing at its height. Her work is a process of discovery: sometimes her delighted response to a new place (for instance, a trip to India in 1990-91), more often a search within herself. She lives in deep English countryside, surrounded by animals and a newish collection of Indian miniatures. Her art is celebratory, exuberant, incantatory, joyous. Even the small paintings sing. The large ones are loud in the language of visu- al pleasure. This is strong meat, but we are bidden to a feast. Rarely have the Sadder Galleries looked so good, not perhaps since the tremendous exhibition of Fauve pic- tures in 1991. Ayres's paintings, many of them over 10 feet in height or width, are admirably suited to the dimensions of the Royal Academy's most attractive space. This is abstract art of the highest order.
`End Game, 1985, by Gillian Ayres
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