Standard fare
John MeEwen
The most striking aspect of the 213th Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy (till 16 August) is how ripe it is for a takeover by the tllitists once again. For years now any artist who considered himself worthy of the name has boycotted the place as a solemn declaration of faith. This attitude was cribbed from the French, and dates back to those happy days when 'nothing in the world was so scandalous as the various attempts of the avant-garde to shock the bourgeoisie. However, unluckily for the progressives, they not only shocked but soon converted the bourgeoisie, with the result that in the egalitarian present everyone considers he has the right to be avant-garde, and free expression takes all manner of forms from punching up parents to shooting the Pope. In this wild scenario of collective anarchy the artist, assiduously minding hivown business in the hopeful interests of a peaceful calling, has become a figure of daily more heroic conservatism. Nothing he can do is likely to upset the public half so much as what they will see in the normal course of events on the evening TV, in the morning paper or even as they travel about. Accordingly, the idea among artists that to show at the Academy is an ideological sell-out, is as dated in its way as the attitude of the most abject amateur who gratefully participates. If only Henry Moore would swallow his pride and enter for the first time, the Summer Show would be transformed overnight into the artistic showcase it has not been for almost a century. Sales are always enormous, the rooms are splendid, the Academy itself would welcome a higher standard of entry, modernist or otherwise — what on earth are Mr Moore and his cohorts of commitment waiting for? As it is, the recipe remains unchanged: a mass of dedicatedly unimaginative work spiced here and there by the efforts of the meritorious few, most of them RAs or ARAs, a couple of portraits by Peter Greenham, the Keeper, particularly outstanding. In addition, the presence of the sculptor Barry Flanagan is especially welcome, 'Colony Room' members will be pleased to note that Michael Clark has won a prize with 'Muriel Belcher ill in Bed' and the architectural models cast their usual. Victorian spell. Chagall and Miro are among the Honorary Academicians. Perhaps things could also be got moving by making a fuss of them next year. They are still both alive after all, not always the case withAcademicians as we know to our cost.
For a sight of the work of artists who should be Summer Exhibition regulars but are not, this is altogether too good a time of year. The place is absolutely hatching with interesting one-man shows. Anthony Fry, one of the best and most dedicated contemporary painters of the female nude, makes a welcome return to the scene at the New Art Centre (till 23 May, and viewable thereafter in the basement). His touch remains as delicate as ever but it is now beneficially employed in the service of more imaginative colour and composition. The work as a result conveys a greater sense of tender-. ness, which admirably complements the innate delicacy of his handling. Antony Donaldson also tackles this immemorial subject with a new set of quite large paintings at the Rowan Gallery (till 29 May). Donaldson is a veteran of the pop era, and for an Englishman has always retained an engagingly open attitude to art — humour, sexiness, sassy materials more often associated with advertising, all having been grist to his mill. Now, despite highheels and the odd provocative pose, he has buckled down to the straightforward business of painting once again. Here too there is considerable delicacy, the canvas saturated rather than coated, maximum illusions of volume conjured with a minimum use of paint. Soft edges dissolve into compositional soft options at times, but this is balanced by some equally assured passages in the painting of the figures themselves. The photo-based, pastel-shaded, soft-focus imagery has obvious commercial associations, but never degenerates into kitsch. On the contrary, the show's aura is of soberness and potential.
Kenneth Martin at the age of 76 is one of our most truly abstract artists. In 1969 he embarked on a programme of work entitled 'Chance and order', in which parallel lines are drawn from paired points of intersection on a grid. His latest sequence of results — in the form of preparatory drawings, oil paintings and prints — are currently on display at Waddington Galler ies and Waddington Graphics (till 23 May).
As before, the drawings have a visual dynamic which seems to get lost in transla tion to the finished paintings; and this is echoed in the greater experimentation of the prints, where the results of the system are also viewed in three-dimensional terms. The zest of Martin's interest, therefore, is admirably undiminished.A few doorsalong, John Kasmin has reopened the Knoedler Gallery in new premises (22 Cork Street, W.1. Tel: 439-1096) with a show of the (Academically ineligible) American Helen Frankenthaler's latest demonstra tions of abstract expressionism. She is the doyenne of the form and keeps schlocking on with a will, but on the evidence of these pictures — massive and otherwise — the move of the gallery is the more deserving of comment.
David Hockney recently designed the sets and costumes for a specially contrived French evening at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and his various designs in the form of crayon sketches, gouaches and oil paintings have been snatched up for exhibition by the enterprising Riverside Studios (till 7 June), The visual invention called for by the variety of Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortileges was most to Hackney's taste, and apparently worked best on stage; but at Riverside his greater talent for drawing makes his Dufy inspired crayon studies for Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tiresias the outstanding feature. Stage design brings out the best, and lighter, side of Hockney.
After highly successful and timely shows devoted to the work of Nigel Hall and John Maine, Bryan Robertson features the drawings and objects of another graduate of the Royal College of Art sculptural department in the Sixties, Kenneth Draper (Warwick Arts Trust till 23 May). Draper creates some intriguing spatial ambiguities and illusions with his predominantly mixed media objects, but over the past decade he has clogged his sculpture with resin and pigment and increasingly devoted his time to drawing dimly representational profusions in pastel. This has encouraged conventional ways. As a result there is a certain irresolution about his progress so far, but the idiosyncratic element admired by Robertson undoubtedly lies in his perception as a sculptor. Edward Wolfe is an RA with six pictures in the Summer Exhibition, a contribution handsomely complemented by what amounts to a retrospective of his paintings and drawings at the Patrick Seale Gallery (through May). Wolfe is the last of the Bloomsbury painters, a gentle student, like so many of them, of Matisse and very easy on the eye and mind. At Seale's be reveals for the first time that he has also had a go at abstract art, but flowers and the sweet life are his inclination and portraits his forte.
Previous page
