Art
Summer sets
Evan Anthony
If I've said it once, I've thought it many times June is a terrible month for an artist to have an exhibition, and this particular June could hardly be thought the exception. What chance for recognition or a quick sale?
Thus we should be grateful to Roland, Browse and Delbanco, Cork Street, for having taken the trouble and assumed the expense of putting on one of their infrequent one-man shows, and no less grateful to Philip Sutton for offering his energetically painted and extravagantly coloured pictures for our pleasure. Unfortunately, my gratitude knows bounds, and as an admirer of Sutton, generally, I think it an objective conclusion that it is more an evident superficiality than an over-familiarity that breeds the slightest bit of contempt for his current crop of flowers and other scenic pleasures. Contempt is, perhaps, a trifle too strong disappointment would be closer. The all-blue paintings, particularly, are boring and failed exercises in limiting the palette, rather than exciting experiments with colour. But there are the good things, namely 'Girl in Black' and 'Flowers at Crown House', and a collection of Sutton pictures still has the ability to make the viewer feel good. But is 'good' good enough?
At the Redfern Gallery, Cork Street, there is a very good mixed collection, billed as the gallery's 'summer exhibition', and it includes a number of first class examples of the work of Redfern artists and others. Mo McDermott's cut-out vase of flowers is not only 'amusing' but attractive, and Robert Young's girl in the yellow dress is a pretty picture that would hold up in the winter, too.
I have already, in the catalogue, declared my interest, but ever anxious to preclude waspeish comment on another page, I must mention again that I do not come upon the work of William Wilkins with any surprise. But that should not deprive me of the pleasure of recognising that his collection of drawings at the Langton Gallery, Langton Street (off Kings Road) is something special. The nudes, and self-portraits are very fine.
Finally, it is sad that Stan Booth's Ansdell Gallery is packing it in. It is not a place that I can in all honesty say has shown impeccable taste, but Booth has done his share in offering a showplace to unknowns, and one or two have been bery good indeed. Alas, the farewell show of Jean Denis Maillart, a French portrait painter and sometime scene designer, leaves something to be desired, but perhaps you should have a look for yourself. They don't paint them like that any more; if they do, they shouldn't.
Previous page
