Exhibitions
Leon Golub, Philip Guston, Sigmar Polke, Joel Shapiro
(Saatchi Collection, till 1 October)
Polke in the eye
Giles Auty
To be frank, a trip to the Saatchi Collection is seldom an experience to which I look forward with unqualified enthusiasm. On the day of my most recent visit, small black clouds formed a scar- abaeoid procession along the St John's Wood skyline. The massive grey steel gates at 98A Boundary Road, NW8, blocking access to the converted paint factory which houses the Saatchi Collection, set a Kaf- kaesque tone for any excursion there. Inside the gates, the long, bare galleries are windowless and disorientating. If art police existed who might wish to brainwash us into orthodoxy, or otherwise subvert our critical thinking, one feels this is where one might meet them. . . . 'Herr Direktor would like to see you before you go, Mr Auty, to discuss some of your previous reviews of the collection. You will find it does not pay to think art criticism can be humorous.'
The four artists on show at present Golub, Guston, Polke and Shapiro — are a relatively cheerless quartet. I do not seek to question the sincerity of any of them but remark, in passing, that the automatic equating of grimness with significance sug- gests too facile a standpoint. The vast paintings by Leon Golub are of mercenar- ies and prisoners, forming rather stilted tableaux of imminent torture and mayhem. The subject is moving in itself but I cannot say that Golub makes it any more real for me. Is one supposed to enjoy or even comment on the way the paint is applied when dealing with such depressive subject matter? The glorious conception and hand- ling of Mantegna's Crucifixion, for inst- ance, aid imagination and understanding. By contrast Golub shuns the directly narra- tive while flirting simultaneously with a kind of flattened formalism; such factors identify him as a modern painter, of course, yet seem to militate against effec- tiveness in treating his chosen subject matter.
Such reservations about Golub's methods are unlikely to affect the height of his current international standing. Since, as an American, his work is relatively un- familiar in Britain, we are indebted to the Saatchis for the opportunities they afford us here to see major displays of work by some of the more visible planets of the current post-modernist galaxy. Inclusion in the Saatchi collection must be viewed, in itself, by many as a major step up the ladder of putative fame. Similarly, Sigmar Polke is not necessarily an artist on whom I would be spending my disposable millions but, once more, the Saatchis have invested heavily. The East German Polke shared the major prize with our own Frank Auerbach at the last-but-one Venice Bien- nale. By being eclectic, ugly, cryptic and careless-looking, Polke's paintings answer many of the more important canons prop- osed by the kind of critics who judge international art prizes. Reading the cata- logue for an exhibition of works by Polke, Warhol and Beuys held in Milwaukee and Houston last year, I learn: 'There is, as well, the "cult of personality" surrounding PoIke. As in the case with Warhol, and with Joseph Beuys, much has been made of the aura of the artist himself as a potential- ly supernatural persona.'
Is it some kind of winged being, one wonders, that Sigmar Polke may im- minently become? Polke, like the late Joseph Beuys, has certainly attained guru status in the world of recent art. However, visitors may find that whatever course of action or philosophy Polke may be preaching from on high will not be readily apprehensible from the paintings on view. The message, if any, might be thought to be that chaos reigns now on this planet, beyond even such obvious areas as the world of art. Polke's productions might easily be understood as the work of many, ranging from comic-book figuration to marks which might be described, not un- reasonably, as Polke dots and dashes. The artist borrows from historical sources, parodies and makes slighting references, all measures likely to appeal to the weary appetities of modern art historians. Like Julian Schnabel, Polke has been proposed as a contemporary artist of primary import- ance. Mere looking at his work is unlikely to reveal why.
Guston, the third of the current quartet, is an artist who has enjoyed something of a reincarnation. Formerly a famed and rather elegant abstract artist of a kind likely to provoke the well-known comment `There's less in this than meets the eye', Guston became weary and finally apostate. Rejecting the holy aestheticism of paint for paint's sake, he has painted since to find out if the activity remains worth doing at all. One large image, 'Painter in Bed', featuring a giant, lumpish head, cigarette and liverish eye, might suggest to most people that it isn't. With Guston one buys not a simply a bloated, despairing image but, a potted history of recent artistic chaos and wrong-mindedness.
The last of the four artists, Shapiro, Leon Golub's vast tableau, 'The Go-Ahead', 1985-86 introduces a touch of levity to a generally dispiriting experience. His sculpture em- ploys an odd, sometimes minuscule scale to explore personal disenchantment, but I did enjoy one precariously balanced figure which refused resolutely to fall flat on its face. In the context of an exhibition such as this one is desperate to find some glimmer of hope in anything.
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