Art
Artyfacts
John McEwen
No artist is more fawned upon by the public sector of the art world at the moment than lam Hamilton Finlay (Serpentine till 16 October). The Arts Council, whose show this is of course, are in awe of him both here and over the Border. The Tate has just bought a piece by him of some letters draped in a fish-net. The organisers of the Battersea Park Sculpture Show went to endless pains to secure an ack-ack gun for him, and the committee of the current RA painting show beat the rules to include some framed pieces of his needlepoint. Now we have the Serpentine Show, immaculately presented it is true, with a catalogue by Dr Stephen Bann (who teaches French at Canterbury University) that adds new meaning to 'french dressing'.
Most of Hamilton Finlay's artytacts (sic) employ words and genteel good taste in a way that is very Sanderson indeed. Finlay is , Scots and he uses words to make wee puns or wee mind-blowing cultural analogies that are understandably the delight of those deprived beings (that so many of them appear to be art commissars is rather worrying) who have educated themselves from the cokmr supplements. What they fail to see, because none of them look, is that Hamilton Finlay is at best a purveyor of middlebrow tourist knick-knacks and at worst a sort of Morningside version of Ossian. There is a darkened room that looks like an unctuous undertaker's front parlour, full of tablets inscribed with Latin tags or twee reflections (`Small is quite beautiful') or bird tables made lo resemble aircraftcarriers. There is another lit by neon pieces of 'concrete' poetry sentimentally evoking the sea, and yet another dressed as a conservatory with ceramic tiles and wateringcans all dolled up with potted plants. There is a slide-show of the Finlays' house and garden in Scotland where most of these objects are displayed out of doors, the sun shining, all the flowers in bloom. Much of the exhibition is on sale in replica in the front office. And the more you see the more you are perplexed by the fact that the people who conduct art in this country seriously consider that this soft soap and sunshine and gnomish rather than gnomic utterance actually has some artistic significance. Hamilton Finlay is not to blame for the shortcomings of these people, of course. In fact, since he has written some good short stories in his time, 1 have a wild hope that his present collusions with then, are only in the higher interest of collecting copy.
A retrospective of James .Lloyd's gotiaches'and almost twenty years' worth of Peter de Francia's drawings and oils are currently filling the Camden Arts Centre (till 9 October). Lloyd was a cowman and de Francia is Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art. Both of them paint entirely in accordance with these facts: Lloyd in a folksy rather than primitive (it is difficult to be primitive these days) illustrative manner, that lacks inspiration except when it comes to pigs; de Francia with nonchalant technical assurance, especially in the drawings, but little personality — all going to show that effort, ability, learning and the rest are to no avail if you lack that one indefinable per cent of creativity, which, as Braque said, is the only thing that counts.
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