Art
Funny Peculiar
Evan Anthony Someone at the Tate has aPparently been eavesdropping to good effect, and all those snide and/or bewildered comments you and I have been making through !he years are now being acknowledged by the management and consolidated in one of those events where the host goodnaturedly stands up and takes a ribbing. The exhibition of carr,t°,ons about modern art' called A -nild of six could do it, is a richly numorous collection, with some Of the funniest being, naturally enough, the truest. Take along a handkerchief — you're going to 10 a lot of laughing. My own avourite (difficult to choose just one, actually) is a Stevenson car00n from the New Yorker. A lady entering an empty room, with a dLoor marked ' Gallery ', is greeted ?Y the man in charge informing ner, "This is the show, Madam."
fld then there's the one . . . oh,
the catalogue; it's got a million of 'em. The jokes get sicker as you ‘‘fend your way into the galleries snowing the Edward Burra retrosPective. Burra is a man who has taken caricature, cartoon, and Watercolour gteps beyond their t4sUally recognised limits. Sir John :rthenstein has written one .of "le few catalogue biographies Worth reading, and it doesn't take a clairvoyant to predict that yet another artist will one day have ,r1 interesting life story turned litIttn a lousy film. Burra's poor ealth determined that watercolour would become his major thedium, and he has used it in a rather unique way. His pictures aren't the sort that you usually ,assnciate with the idea of ' water'; it is probably the scale of s"e paintings that makes them ?ern grander in concept, but it is the scope of the subjects. andscapes like View at Florence ,sand The Tunnel are ingeniously `-onstructed and Burra's developent of his use of full colour and Wh,esh effect is at its height in these Tetures. They are surprising ex:rnPles of his work inasmuch as e could easily be excused for IT„ving up hope of ever seeing a , urra painting that is not ,ch: arged with menace.' Cont`elvably, The Tunnel does have a ht3uch of the surreal, but that asi-,.?Ft is secondary in appreciating :Is Painting as a beautifully comPo!ed, subtly coloured landscape. s ourra's preoccupation with the ,,earnier sides of life, or at least his "113Pensity for endowing scenes tiLct People with a touch (some'"es a full blow) of nastiness in dicates a decidedly jaundiced view of societies. The earlier work — the scenes of Harlem, sailor bars, the rich life — are cynical; the later pictures — anthropomorphised animals, rattling skeletons, pseudo-religious — are theatrical. Burra out of Grosz is to be preferred to Burra out of de Chirico. There is possibly a statement to be made about artists like Burra. Toulouse-Lautrec, and even Gerald Scarfe — men whose physical problems have seemingly affected their choice of subjects and their treatment, but we shall leave that to others to pursue; or as Burra quoted by Rothenstein said when asked the meaning of one of his pictures, " Bring in a psychiatrist and we'll find out." Nothing enigmatic remains to be examined while considering the work of Keith Michell at the John Whibley Gallery, Cork Street. This is the kind of exhibition nasty art critics enjoy covering, and reporting, say, "This is the kind of exhibition that gives acting a bad name, not to mention painting." Michell's six (at least) studies of Abelard and Heloise,
and a Henry VIII self-portrait or two, could be interpreted as the work of a man trying to find him self. Using impasto as though a
concrete-mixer manqué, and sprinkling liberally with splashes of gold and silver, he has produced a gaudy collection that conceals every sign of the taste and talent that some of his drawings show.
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