Art
Oddball
John McEwen
In art, as in dress, fashion is not very fashionable at the moment, so artists whose work defies categorisation. are much acclaimed. H.C. Westermann is one of the most difficult to place of American artists. and because he has remained true to Chicago, become famous there and thus by his idiosyncratic example inspired a batch of younger Chicagoans to do their own artistic thing, he is today regarded as something of an old he is 59 oddball master. Now he has his first one-man show and retrospective in England, sharing the space of the Serpentine Gallery with his most ardent English propagandist, the 73-year-old Sam Smith also, according to Sue Grayson. Organiser of the Serpentine, `the English artist with whom Westermann has most in common' (till 8 February). While Chicago art in general is celebrated in an exhibition entitled Who Chicago, which closed recently at the Camden Arts Centre, but can be pursued to Sunderland (Ceolfrith Gallery, Sunderland Arts Centre, the organisation responsible for bringing the show to England, 16 February till 14 March), Glasgow (Third Eye Centre, 21 March till 30 April), Edinburgh (Scottish National Gallery of
Modern Art, May/June) and Belfast (Ulster Museum, July/August).
Artists over here do not wear sandals so much any more but, nevertheless, it still seems a more prissy business than in America. Westermann is a typical case in point having worked, among other things, as a ganger on the railroad, been courtmartialed in the navy for drunkenness, fighting and leaving his post, performed as Top Mounter in a professional two-man hand-balancing act and having wound up his pre-artistic career as a Marine Corps sergeant in Korea. He saw a lot of active service in these years and his more gruesome memories of war haunt his drawing and sculpture to this day. There was the carrier 'Franklin' which blew up a thousand feet from where he was standing with the loss of 2,300 men; and a mutiny on the 'Intrepid' in which the marine sent • below decks to restore order was ripped apart and the various bits of his body thrown 'back up topsides. Of course'you'll never read this in any Naval history book,' • These memories seem to surface more and more in Westermann's present consciousness, as the jokiness of his Sixties sculptures like 'Swingin! Red King and Silver Queen' (like, but later than, the Contemporary work of our own Eduardo Paolozzi), 'Lily Bolero (also Paolozzi-ish) and 'Strong Man's Chair' (a very strongly made chair) makes way for the.darker mood of his recent 'Death Ships'. Almost all these and other objects are beautifully, almost reverentially, carpentered in various, no less lovingly, selected and listed woods hut, . despite the understandable fact that his reputation is founded upon them, they Prove less compulsive, less frenetically imaginative, than his ink and watercolour caricatures. Sam Smith in bewildering contrast makes jolly, brightly painted miscellaneously devised and ornamented, overcomplicated little wooden models of boats. Puppets that move to a tug on a string, and sO on. There are hundreds of them cluttering the back gallery at the Serpentine and. With all the grown-ups and children desperate to pull strings, the place, no doubt Particularly at weekends, is a scene of Confusion worthy of liamleys. Westermann deserved and needs the gallery to himself. Who Chicago might well have had a (Iliestion mark attached. After all the Whisperings about the liveliness of what was going on there, this demonstration. if representative, proves a severe disappointment. Some of it admittedly is no worse Italians the much vaunted work of the new italians on view at the Academy in A New Spirit in Painting — or indeed of the Pattern rainters and various other recently financially rewarding styles — but that is not staying very much. A lot of the artists seem ° he trying too hard to live up to their • °utsider image, with the result that they end LIP being derivative. Jim Nutt's drawings ,,ho Westermann and the artists of Berlin's %1/41ecadence, but his obsession with sexual ftrife is undoubtedly heartfelt and he is h '"nnY too.
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