ART
OF all the year's mixed exhibitions I ap- proach that of the Young Contemporaries with the least misgiving. It is by no means that the standard at the RBA Galleries in Suffolk Street is higher than elsewhere, but however orthodox or unorthodox, influenced or uninfluenced, they may be, students retain to a high degree a wonderful freshness of eye and a genuine excitement at the visual splendours of the world about them. The two influences which seem to have weighed most heavily this year—one might have guessed it—are Francis Bacon and Alan Reynolds. The strongest personality is undoubtedly Diana Cummings, who contributes three intensely seen composi- tions—an odd vision of the 'Creation,' an authoritative portrait in a dry, chalky Neue Sachlichkeit manner, and a study of a nude in an empty room. Two other women whose canvases "repay study are Anthea Oswell and Jean Cooke, whose multitud- inous self-portraits run through the exhibi- tion like a Wagnerian leitmotif. Keith Grant, Paul McDowell, Helen Whiteford, Bernard Cohen and Bruce Lacey are also notable among the painters; David Dobson with his ambitious Crucifix, S. C. Harpley with his hunched old lady from South Kensington, John Mills with his group of four boys after a bathe and Trevor Faulkner with his Cock Bird among the sculptors.
At Gimpel's, the Irish painter Thurloe Conolly shows for the first time in London his neat, flat abstractions in pretty, muted colours, and Alan Davie shows five large compositions bursting with imprisoned energy. Davie is about the only British representative of that current movement- (strong in France and the United States) that relies to a great degree upon a measure of automatism in its painting. Davie is better at it than most and this show, which has undeniable power, marks a distinct development in his outlook. I believe the concept to be an essentially minor one however, in that it is incapable of being developed beyond a certain point.
For the next three months the Tate Gallery is showing the impressionist and other paintings belonging to the Hon. Mrs. A. E. Pleydell-Bouverie. This is a gentle collection, in which, nothing jars (unless it
NATIONAL ART COLLECTIONS
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