ARTS
Stars and stripes
John McEwen
The October Gallery is becoming quite a force on the London scene: a novel gallery — it offers cheap and wholesome food and stages all kinds of cultural events as well as presenting exhibitions — coming up with some very novel and enterprising shows. Last month they continued their admirable campaign on behalf of the paintings of that underestimated septuagenarian, Gerald Wilde; now they do a similar, no less timely, job for the American Brion Gysin. Gysin, like Wilde, is also something of a legend in the cultural underworld, though of a much more cosmopolitan kind. He is a star of the Beat Generation, better known as a novelist and father of Sound Poetry than as a painter, but most revered of all for his collaborations with William Burroughs. He it was who applied the collage technique of the Cubists to writing, confiding his invention of cut-ups and permutations to Burroughs with the admonition: 'Writing is 50 years behind painting.' To which Burroughs replied: 'Should writing try to catch up?' It remains a debatable question.
Ironically, from the vantagepoint of 1981, Gysin's painting — the work on view dates from the Fifties and Sixties — looks eminently respectful of tradition. Out of Surrealism by way of oriental calligraphy (he studied Japanese in the Army during the War) his imagery at its most abstract — single calligraphic marks meshed by repetition to cover the entire canvas — looks very like, too like, the similarly inspired and more famous paintings of the late Mark Tobey. But even if Gysin did borrow from Tobey (and such chains of influence invariably prove circular in the end) the delicacy of his handling is outstanding. For most of the post-War years he has been based in Morocco 4nd many of the later pictures in the show are rather more naturalistic ink drawings of crowds: dots and dashes, a shade too close for comfort to the way this sort of thing is done by tourist artists. But in compensation the same Sixties period also gives rise to the best work on view in the form of some stunning desert landscapes both in oil and watercolour, though best in watercolour. Here delicacy of touch comes into its own, and makes Gysin worthy of a place in a great and long tradition. The exhibition finishes on 4 April, but it must be hoped that the October will persist in showing the artist as it has done with Wilde.
The Maclean Gallery (till 17 April) has another of its excellent exhumatory exhibitions, this time devoted to the drawings of Alexander Brook (1898-1980). Brook was a consciously conservative artist, who received considerable acclaim in the States between the Wars when anti-avant-garde, anti-European feeling ran high, but inevitably suffered as severe a rejection when the fashion switched after 1945. Most of the drawings on view — gently erotic studies in pencil of girls in and out of their under clothes — are saved from boredom or the banality of illustration by the informal charm of many of the poses and Brook's own fidgety but often exquisite skill as a draughtsman. It is sad that the fickle demands of the market first estimated his talent too high and then too low. Sad too that he did not see this show, and the others that will no doubt ensue, restoring him, if not quite to his former glory as a local hero, at least some way towards it.
Brook would certainly clear the floor with practically everyone in the exhibition of Drawings and Watercolours by 13 British Artists at Marlborough (till 10 April) — featuring Moore, Nicholson, Sutherland, Piper et al. Auerbach is much in evidence with an array of new portraits. As before the smudged and rubbed, torn and gashed pieces of paper on which, at last, he pins down the fleeting likeness he has wrestled for, proclaim the work ethic and bleeding heart just a bit too much for comfort. On the whole the initialled or anonymous titles of his portraits shield the identity of the sitter so that their success as representations has to be taken on trust. This time, however, one name, Catherine Lampert (of the Arts Council), is daringly proclaimed, and for the life of me I could not make out the spark of a resemblance. Auerbach's success, or lack of it, in achieving a resemblance, evocation — call it what you will is particularly crucial to a proper consideration of his merit, (a) because he makes such a thing of it and (b) because the formal qualities of his pictures are often less than convincing. Letting Catherine Lampert out of the bag leaves his high reputation looking distinctly wobbly. Far and away the best thing in the show is 'The Head of a Girl' by Kokoschka — some Briton he, of course.
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