Exhibitions
Sargy Mann (Cadogan Contemporary, till 6 April) Joy Girvin (Blason Gallery, till 3 April) Janet BouIton (Mercury Gallery, till 13 April) Fred Ingrains (Rebecca Hossack Gallery, till 6 April)
Looking Up
Giles Auty
Some years ago I shared a table in a crowded cafeteria at the Barbican Centre with a young, earnestly arty couple. Both theorised at length about the exhibition the three of us had just been looking at. I had just concluded they were among the more misguided and uninformed people I had ever overheard when the young woman rose to leave. 'I must go now, darling,' she announced, 'as I have to take part in Crit- ics' Forum.'
Many people believe, I know, that radio and television programmes about art are largely the preserve of communists and 'Warwick Gardens', by Sargy Mann, on show at Cadogan Contemporary cross-dressers. It will therefore amaze such cynics, as it does me, that I have been asked to take part in three broadcast arts programmes in as many weeks. With spring on its way, a buoyant stock-market, an end of Gulf scaremongering and an acknowl- edgment by our broadcasting services that the person who has been writing this col, umn for the past seven years does truly exist, things, from my point of view, could be said to be looking up. Even the gloom which has affected commercial gallery- owners for so many months seems to be lifting a little. Perhaps sensibly priced works of art will begin to sell again. This week in London there are so many interest- ing exhibitions that I could have written easily about a dozen or more.
Among those I have not reviewed, I would recommend especially an exhibition at the Fine Art Society in Bond Street of drawings by the great aesthete John Ruskin. In complete contrast, I enjoyed also the dogged, gritty paintings of the late Alan Lowndes which are on show now at Crane Kalman in Brompton Road. Alan, who was a self-taught artist and son of a railwayman, was the least pretentious artist I have known. His stammer apart, such absence of side would have qualified him as an excellent broadcaster or teacher. However, Alan, who was a down-to-earth, figurative artist, was offered only one day's art school teaching in his life. This took place during the heyday of abstract expres- sionism. His first tutorial was with a whim- sical young woman who greeted him thus: 'I'm so glad you've come to teach us, Mr Lowndes, instead of another of those awful abstract painters.' Well then, what's that you're painting?' Alan inquired, peer- ing suspiciously at the student's work. 'An angel,' she responded. Alan was unim- pressed. 'All I can say is, there's n-n-noth- ing so abstract as a flipping angel.' Sargy Mann, who is showing at Cadogan Contemporary (108 Draycott Avenue, SW3), does not paint angels. He paints instead the perceptual world, doing so with rare grace and freedom in spite of seeing hazily now out of only one eye. Years spent drawing and painting from life familiarised him with forms and colours. He approaches landscapes and interiors with confidence bred of knowledge; at 54 these are his best works yet. Large paintings such as 'The Family at Lyndhurst Grove' and 'Warwick Gardens' deserve serious appraisal. Both are overlaid and animated with scratchy marks which are drawn rather than painted.
The young artist Joy Girvin, on view cur- rently at the impressive recently opened Blason Gallery (351 Kennington Lane, SE11), is another who is liberated by her drawing skills, in her case in pastel. She is less assured with a paintbrush. Her linear works, such as 'Scala di Luce' and 'Fontana dei Dragi, Villa Este', are vigorous yet gen- tle in spirit, the last summoning faint mem- ories of that excellent neo-Romantic, the late David Jones.
Joy Girvin is 30 and I have followed her work with interest since she was a student. She will reward watching. Much of her recent work stems from a sojourn in Italy. This is a characteristic shared also by that of Janet Boulton, showing now at Mercury Gallery (26 Cork Street, W1), who is the sole artist allowed to paint in the gardens of Harold Acton's Villa La Pietra. She does equal justice to plants and statuary, draw- ing confidently and cleanly in watercolour and pencil. Her other major subject is glass containers which she arranges in formal squads. The result is a restrained but rewarding classicism.
Fred Ingrams is not an artist — or crick- eter — given to restraint. Indeed, as a good, straight hitter and tearaway bowler he has done more than anyone to resist the
annual triumphs of The Spectator's venera- ble team in cricket contests waged annually at the Oval. Fred Ingrams's paintings at Rebecca Hossack Gallery (35 Windmill Street, WI) show ebullience in colour and method. He, too, has been in the Mediter- ranean recently and assaults the landscape, through the medium of painting, with remarkable vim. Such vigorous, colourful painting is not easy to carry off successfully. The artist's enthusiasm is infectious.
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