Art
Undercurrents
John McEwen
The death of the painter Nicholas de Stael in 1955 has come to be regarded as something of a watershed in post-War art, marking as it does the approximate moment when New York succeeded Paris as the capital of contemporary art affairs. Now we seem to be on the line of another watershed, in which much of the newest art stimulating the market comes from Europe and the formalist doctrines of New York's cultural high-priests are everywhere challenged by a more frivolous and depictive subject-matter. Instead of bricks we have pictures in jolly colours of people once again. It is, therefore, an appropriate moment for the current de Stael retrospective (Tate Gallery till 29 November) and the gallery's director, Alan Bowness — himself a member of the generation most affected by the artist — spells out in his introduction the sort of questions we should be considering: 'Was he in fact the last great painter of the Ecole de Paris, as is often claimed? Are there not qualities in the European art of the 1940s and 1950s that have been too lightly disregarded as a consequence of our infatuation with the vigour and exhilaration of American painting?'
Even though de Stael is ripe for revaluation, these are not easy questions. He was, for a start, very influential and not least in England, and this deprives us of the element of surprise. His hallmark, thanks to the gaudy derivations of thousands of art teachers, is probably most commonly seen as bright and vaguely depictive blocks of colour lavishly spread with a palette knife. But confronted with the whole range of his painting this later style, for all its immediate attraction, marks his decline. More and more as one looks at the show it is the midterm work of his brief career, particularly the rather menacing and energetic abstractions of the later 1940s (in room 2), that stand out. Most subtle in its elaboration of brushstroke and texture, perhaps most dangerously and profoundly expressive of his nature, is the largest and blackest of these pictures, 'Composition in Black' 1946. Its dark design is made all the more ominous by a core of red under-paint and two lines of white flash like blades. Colour, especially red, came to dominate his painting in the course of time and nine years after this picture he put an end to his own life by jumping from his studio at Antibes.
The French contributor to the catalogue in the melodramatic way of French art criticism sees de Stael as the personification of genius paving a way for himself 'without the shadow of others' influence'. But Denys Sutton, in a contemporary postscript to his introduction to the last de Stael retrospective here in 1956, concludes that the artist's connection with Russian art is what now seems more apparent. It certainly does, especially in the work of the first half of his career. This is corroborated by one of his closest friends, who noted how the artist, on meeting his fellow Russian exiles Kandinsky and Lanskoy in 1944, found 'himself in sympathy with certain qualities of mood and atmosphere, specifically Russian in character' in their painting. The example of Lanskoy encouraged de Stael to use thick paint and sombre tones lit at their crusty edges with colour. But it extends to more than this. There are also unmistakable echoes in his style, derived or inherent, of much earlier 20th-century Russian artists: Larionov's lines of force, Vrubel's stacked flowers, Popova's abstract blocks of colour. As the exhibition progresses French influences, French demands, seem to drive out this native feeling. Abstraction gives way to depiction, colours become brighter and prettier, the paint thins to a stain, taste increasingly gets the better of daring. De Stael's tragedy is exposed: the less he was himself, the more marketable his pictures became. 'Don't take me for a factory', he complained to his dealer a fortnight before the end. Nevertheless, enough had been achieved to assure him of a place among the first rank of abstract painters, the best of the last of the Russian line stretching back to the turn of the century — a Russianness that makes him in the end not so much a victim of the market but of his exile, at first from his country, then from himself. In demonstrating this, and his ultimate work, the exhibition sets the record straight.
The Tate retrospective is neatly complemented by a small exhibition of de Stael's drawings and the four books he designed (Taranman till 28 November). The 14 drawings, including surely one of the first done anywhere in felt-tip, cover the span of his career and again reveal the strength of his 1940s work. The catalogue is up to the usual impeccable Taranman standard and in addition a separate volume of all the artist's letters to his principle dealer has also been published. As the Tate has dropped the drawings and graphic work from its presentation the Taranman show represents an essential postscript.
Two years ago our leading colour abstractionist, John Hoyland, had a resoundingly successful mid-career retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery and other venues. Now he has his first postretrospective show of paintings (Waddington Galleries till 31 October) and, almost inevitably perhaps, it proves a slight anti-climax. Triangles variously painted are islanded in seas — a slight preference for blue makes the metaphor all the more apt —.of basically monochrome colour. There is impact but not much lasting power, and quotations of the work of other painters — notably Frankenthaler and Jack Bush — that obstruct Hoyland's own style. Hoyland always seems best when he is working against his softer nature, working his pictures as hard as he can. Seeing the ease with which he handles acrylic and bear ing the complications of de Stael in mind, one wonders if oil paints might not now offer him a revivifying challenge. The latest batch of pictures in stripes by an apparently rather played-out Kenneth Noland, an American market giant of the 1960s, and some rather flashily enlarged, obscure but not mysterious, pictograms by a new addition to the Waddington stable, David Tremlett, occupy the other two galleries (till 31 October).
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