Happy innocent
Evan Anthony
Just consider what happens to the Spectator who goes to see a conjuror Perform with the sole purpose of disco vering the trick. The more tricks he knows the stupider will he find the entertainment, for in fact the whole performance is nothing at all; a sheer deception which can be enjoyed only by the innocents who permit themsleves to be fooled. That, in fact, is the whole charm.
As one of this world's innocents, I have thus been completely taken in, charmed and then some, by the Hayward Gallery's mounting of the work of Antoni rapies. It is a treasure of a show, and with all its excesses is stimulating, original and witty. TNpies, as luck would have it, also happens to write so well that, although you may not care to swallow at one gulp all he Proclaims in his catalogue essays, his unpretentious and unportentous style should encourage you to read on before closing your mind to the complicated tangles of his.
The analogy between magician and artist quoted above is but a part of an attempt to explain one of his Pictures. The complete argument is a heady piece of revelation, but it should be said at once (if not sooner) that the written word Would not begin to be so impressive if unsupported by the visual reference. Now . . . entering the gallery, turn immediately left and look up along that wall.
Is that a painted air vent or a rapies? By the time you have seen the entire collection you should be able (a) to tell the difference, or (b) not to tell the difference, or (c) not to care a damn either way. For those likely to select '(a)' it may now be added that there are also clumps of straw, some wire, bits and pieces of one thing and another, and some Paint; for those who choose `(b)' it can be said that it doesn't matter; for the `(c)' people and anyone else, let us leave the subject with a further quote from Thpies on Chekhov: "It's extraordinary, he tells you almost nothing. He is almost absent. He gives you bits of reality in its raw state, which cross his mind. No philosphy, nothing sOlemn: just incidents of intimate life, accidents of daily living .. Morris Louis, who shares the Hayward with Thpies is described by some as the great American abstract expressionist, and there are others who will repeat the 'in' Joke that more work seems to have come out of his studio since his death in 1962 than during his lifetime. With the technique that Louis dwelled upon — Stained canvases with overlapping colours producing a transparent effect _ there could be that danger. I have.never Particularly admired Louis's works in isolation, and though, seen as a collection, the early 'Veils' do have a colourful and peaceful attraction, they do tend to remind me more of teeth-and-bone X-rays than of
"masterpiece after masterpiece."
Richard Dadd's acknowledged masterpiece is `The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke' and it is included in The Late Richard Dodd exhibition at the Tate, borrowed from the Tate. Dadd's poor dad sired seven children, four of whom were judged to be insane, and Dadd senior was stabbed to death by Richard, who thought his father to be the devil. The exhibition of mad Richard's pictures, along with literature about the Dadds and their friends and doctors, has been admirably organised by Patricia Allderidge, Archivist to the Bethlem Royal and the Maudsley Hospital, and it seems a remarkable thing to hear of a concrete diagnosis of insanity: in today's atmosphere of 'enlightened' approaches to the mentally ill one can easily get the impression that all mental disorders are caused by crowded hospitals and inept psychiatrists. Fortunately for Dadd, at the age of twenty-six,in 1843, committed to the Bethlem Royal, he seems to have been surroupded by helpful doctors who allowed him to spend the remaining forty-odd years of his life painting away.
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