Art

Exhibitions: Ian Scott:

Peter

McLeavey Galleries. Alan Pearson:

Bett Duncan Gallery. Young Artists

Exhibition 1974:

NZ Academy of Fine Arts. Reviewed by Martin Edmond.

Ian Scott used to paint palpable people, girls in bikinis and girls leaping through the blue skies, with real hills, trees, grass and so forth. That was in the middle and late sixties; since then there has been a period in which he showed very little work. Now he has exhibited a new group of paintings at Peter McLeavey's, which, if they show nothing else, indicate a quite startling change of orientation since the 'real' paintings. These new ones are striped lozenges of paint tilted across vast, blank and pure white canvases. Though they carry vaguely poetic titles — 'Blooming Light'. 'Auckland Morning' — their design is in no sense representational. Rather, they are variations on a formal configuration which is itself of extreme simplicity: it consists of a rectangular figure tilted at about 30 degrees to the vertical axis of the canvas. Inside this figure, the colours may change and may modify each other. Outside is to be left white.

It is worth emphasising the size of the canvases — about 8 foot high and between 2½ to 5 foot wide. Being such large objects and absolutely uncompromising in their initial presentation, they were, to me immediately impressive. To walk in on them was a shock and a perplexity. Apparently they take their place in a fairly recent tradition of American painting — post '50s — called Colour-Field painting sometimes, at others 'Colour Kinevsiaulity' and other tags as well.

Such painting, it seems to me, makes heavy demands on the observer — not in the sense that it asks him to take in so much, but in that it provides a minimal stimulus, a minimal complexity, if you like, from which the observer presumably derives a response of high intensity. Whether it is a question of work on the part of the observer or rather of a receptivity, a willingness to be worked on, I don't know. I suspect anyway that those two alternatives, in the end, are not very different.

The light as it fell across the white background and the lozenge of colour had a mellowing effect; the rather harsh — stark — beauty of the painting was softened by the light. And that is about the nearest I can come to evaluate comment. We can expect more painting from Ian Scott along the line he has taken over. Or at least I hope so. He cannot get away with such drastic changes of style more than once a decade. If he is to take his impetus from elsewhere, he must make the style his own; which he has not get done.

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It is something of a relief to turn to Alan Pearson's exhibition at the Bett Duncan. Here the models and influences are familiar, as is the style and the approach. There is a corresponding feeling that there are fairly definite limits to what Pearson can hope to achieve. His paintings are portraits, including oneself-portrait, still lifes and scenes from his garden. I feel confident in identifying Van Gough, Matisse and perhaps Gauguin being some of these paintings and even, in some, a kind of neo-impressionism, demonstrated by a preoccupation with pouring light. All the canvases are small and most, to my eye somewhat cluttered. I call it colour overkill; he seems to swamp his subject in brilliant colour and expressive brush work; yet the purpose what is to be expressed, is not always obvious. I take it that his subject in most cases is not primarily paint or colour, but the expressive possibilities they present in relation to pieces of the 'real world'. As such some of the portraits strike me as oddly incongruous. The faces, with their heavy gaze and melancholy eyes, stare out of their glittering cages of colour, as if trapped, as if unhappy to find themselves in the situation of the painting. The canvases are filled to the point of overflowing; yet, paradoxically, they do not seem to have any extension beyond themselves.

I would except from these general remarks three still-lifes — nos 3, 6, and 12, Number 3, 'Still Life with Hydrangeas' is remarkable for the way the claustrophobic use of perspective noticeable in many of the works seems finally to collapse towards a flat surface of paint; and the configuration of the blossoms, with their brilliant colour, is quite lovely.

The opening of the NZ Academy exhibition was something of a cultural event. There was the supposedly Dada spectacle of buckets of baked beans washing across the floor while the the orchestra played someone-or-other and a dignatary pontificated. It was all a little too good-humoured and stagey to me; people weren't so much outraged as intrigued, even to the extend of wondering which band-wagon they should leap for. Unfortunately, none creaked into view, so we returned to our wine and conversation. The call 'bring out your dead' if it were honoured with any regard for truth, might have produced any number of atrophied sensibilities.

The quality of the work in the show is rather poor, taken all over. I would except from this Robert Franken's pen drawings, because of their undoubted originality, high technical quality and grotesque appeal. And the work of two 18 year old New Plymouth artists, Richard Penney and Andrew Davie, more on the evidence of their promise and their lack of pretension than anything else; though two of Penney's works, 'Time Was 11' and '56' and Davie's 'I Saw the Figure Five in Gold' are fine paintings. If we add to these Bruce Young's two sculptures, that is the sum total of necessary work in the exhibition. Bryan James may have mastered a technique of woodcut printing, but his subjects are banal in the extreme, a kind of social comment which requires a degree of arrogance on the part of the artist and makes his supposed sympathy merely pretence.

Unpleasant optical effects is the limit of Michael Tomas' achievement; and Gary Griffiths painting, despite his portentious statement in the catalogue, is not-so-pretty trivia. These works provide only an excuse for abuse; there is perhaps more to be said for Bruce Barber's media presentation, if one is prepared to undergo the required deprivation experience. I wasn't so I can't comment Much of this work is derivative, in that it requires as a point of reference overseas work which we see hereonly as prints. It occurs to me that the artists themselves have not seen the actual works whose lead they attempt to follow: not a promising situation. My final objection is to the policy of presenting 'statements by the artist' in the catalogue. It serves only to highlight the gap between a man's stated aim and actual achievement.