Pied Piper
BRYAN ROBERTSON
At the New London Gallery, John Piper can be found in full force with a large sho%% of new oil paintings and gouaches. The exhibition is not too big from the point of view of content: nicely divided as it is between architectural souvenirs pre- sented in a manner half-way between paintings and drawings, and studies of land- scape in England and France in which blocks of strong colour counterpoint the underlying calligraphy in a more painterly and abstract equation. But Piper's work is best presented in small quantities because %%hat he imposes stylistically over his sub- ject-matter can lead to a monotony for the eye, so that the attention wanders.
A brief catalogue definition by Piper is in reality not fulfilled by the work on show: 'Romantic painting is about the particular, not the general' we read, after a reference to Paul Nash's invocation of the genius loci, and are then confronted by dozens of glowing small paintings in which particular aspects and moods of very speci- fically selected landscapes are consistently generalised by Piper's treatment of them. He employs a high-keyed or deeply smouldering kind of colour—not unlike stained glass—which floods across whole areas of the scene in an enjoyably emotive, suggestive way. These paintings are full of the spirit of place as well as the time of day and the weather at that moment: but the colour tends to iron out these distinc- tions when viewed en masse.
With this qualification, how resourceful
Piper is in the way he concentrates the entire structure and texture of a landscape into a co-ordinated essay in explosive calli- graphy. He also traps the energy of the landscape and its exact degree of animation, passivity, lushness or austerity. Piper is clearly not content to rest on his laurels as a national monument but still actively experi- ences every line and mark, every wash of colour, and shows signs of greater probity in the more abstract side of his work. The dangers, as always with Piper, are technical ease which can degenerate into formal or decorative clichés, and a colour sense which can sometimes seem too raw and super- ficial: possibly coarsened or at least condi- tioned by work in other fields. Pictorial colour, however abstract, is different to fabric or tapestry or stained-glass colour, and paintings can lose their proper depth of character when this distinction becomes confused.
A younger painter who has made full use of the American signals of release in scale, space and colour without being obliterated by them is John Hoyland, whose recent paintings are in their last week at Leslie Waddington's gallery. The show is full of passion and warmth brought to bear on coolly calculated sets of variations with squares and bands of colour in edgy align- ment, all set in colour-as-space which really works as an engrossing, constantly chang- ing context. The colour is mostly hot : reds, yellows and oranges, offset by kingfisher. like flashes of blues and greens. The colour- as-shape areas are greatly affected by a directional movement in the brushwork and an occassional use of thicker paint with a palette knife, also used directionally: that is, either flowing across the long, horizontal canvases or rising vertically and sometimes ending in smoky, vaporous or flickering edges. The most obvious enrichment of Hoyland's painting vocabularly is in a more sensual and saried use of paint. And small, almost accidental, smears and trails of colour which might spread outside the shapes in earlier work are now turning into formalised. deliberately stated incidents in their own right.
William Pye's sculpture in chrome-plated or stainless steel tills the newly-transformed and very beautiful Redfern Gallery with authority and what can only be described as a glittering musicality: each shiny silver sculpture catches and transmits light and Pye's shapes for some time have been mainly tubular. often using industrial pre- cast sections. This implies an odd analogy with musical instruments, but eventually proposes a far greater identification with something rather solemn and still, like temples or ritualised gestures in Indian dance movement. Pye is an excellent sculp- tor but he shows signs of obsession with the technical variations of joint and angle inherent in the restricted character of his material. Something impersonal, pre- ordained, and smoothed out intrudes too much into situations in which one feels a more complex imagination is struggling to surmount or at best deploy technical traps.
Even so. the exhibition is full of delicate feeling, strongly expressed. A change of materials, or the addition of other elements Only possible from other substances, might substantiate more broadly Pye's consider- able gifts. The catalogue is an exceptionally intelligent and useful document: taken with the show, the Redfern provides an unusually thoughtful and instructive occasion.
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