Art
Drawbacks
John McEwen
9" he Hayward Annual (Hayward Gallery till 30 August) is with us once again. This year it is devoted to 'drawing' and, despite a smattering of paintings on paper and even a three-dimensional 'scribble' in bent and clamped scaffolding, drawing is what we get. Considering the aura of ex- cellence that still surrounds the Annual — or surely should if it is to be THE event it clearly strives to be — it is a disappoint- ment. This is largely because the majority of our most respected artists did not submit work. The result is like coming down to breakfast and finding someone has drunk the top of the milk. Some cream usually remains, as at the Hayward, but not much.
The show, which seeps into the two thirds of the building not required for the display of a Soutine exhibition (till 22 August), presents a rambling and ultimately ener- vating display of sturdy professionalism. It is the absolute stuff of open submissions. Certain categories predominate, though the whole show can be said to be more about the meat and gravy of self-expression than desserts of beauty. There is not much delicacy to be seen nor femininity, despite abundant work by women.
The leading category might be described as Slade School style, which is not surpris- ing since the Slade still takes drawing seriously. The hallmark of Slade style is the nude model (not 'girl', personality is never allowed to shine through) 'stitched' to- gether with complete perspectival accuracy through minute attention to measurement. Just as the personality of the model is avoided, so is any individuality of hand. This perverse style is the legacy of Thirties logical positivism, but its factual strictures still attract a puritan following. A more widely practised and general affect of Slade style, however, is a protestant celebration of work. Effort must at all times be made visible — the rubbing and grubbing that have gone into the making of the drawing being as much the point of the final product as the abandoned lines themselves. Bomberg went to the Slade and his rough and ready way with charcoal has had a par- ticular influence. Stitchery Slade and rough-and-ready Slade amount to two categories. In contrast to all this black endeavour (Slade style is anti-colour, as you might expect) are bright paintings on paper by lingering disciples of New York School Abstract Expressionism. Like all the best abstract painters, the abstract expressionists only became abstractionists after long figurative apprenticeships. To start out
from where they left off results, nine times out of ten, in pastiche. Membership of the magic tenth continues to elude the variou.s swashbucklers at the Hayward. FinallYi this selection, there are the whimsical describers (with invariably that English taint of sentimentality) and the fantasists. Outlawed — perhaps unentered — are clinical styles like geometric abstraction ca' photographic realism and the unfashion- able, cleverer-than-thou, offerings of Cow ceptualism. Nor is there grandeur. The show is in sore need of a Sandle, a Pether bridge. As it is one is grateful for the efforts of the better-known artists who did enter Victor Willing, Victor Newsome, Michael Kenny, Jeffery Camp, Adrian Berg, Martin Naylor, Terry Atkinson, John Maine, Carl Plackman, especially Paula Rego arid Leonard McComb. One is pleased to see Natalie Dower, Graham Crowley and All" drew Stahl follow up good recent debuts with successful entries and, best of all, one is alerted (in this reviewer's case, mostly fel the first time) to the talents of Avls Newman, Christopher Holloway, Stephen, Masterson, Matthew Shelley, Michael Clark, John Skinner, Peter Archer and the bizarre and poetic Dave Gilbert. A third uf the artists in the show, including several of those listed here, are under 30, and that too is in its favour; nevertheless the virtual boycott by senior artists must rule out tills ' kind of open submission for future Ai!' nuals, if the event is to have the prestige it
Should. The Arts Council already fulfils its °Pen submission obligations with the series of Summer Shows at the Serpentine Gallery. Hayward shows should be matters of honour, not convenience. Criticism must also be made of the catalogue introduc- tions, both written in the cant that gives art a bad name. 'Morgan has the artist's mind; he says the simple things that clever people don't say,' wrote Virginia Woolf of E. M. Forster. With two such articulate and literate artists on the committee as Euan Uglow and Kenneth Armitage (already seen to be a vivid writer) an opportunity for enlightenment has been lost. The celebra- tion of Soutine should be experienced, and Will have to be reviewed, separately.
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