Art
Soft centres
John McEwen
At first glance Victor Newsome's paintings and drawings at Anthony d'Offay (till 18A June) look as cold as the medicine chest an' clinical bathroom they obsessively describe,: Upstairs there are the drawn studies for fon' paintings which hang in the lower gallerYi The studies include a bemusing number °, compass pin-pricks, arced and rulered numerals and rubber marks, all hinting a' untold mysteries of perspectival calculanont and, beyond that, the technique and eff°1 that has gone into the making of the Pat': ings. Downstairs there are equally Pail% taking acrylics on wood of the reflections shining bathroom walls. It all appears ve" scholarly and ascetic. Looking longer and closer, however, ?'°„111 begin to notice contradictions of this iron', impression. If these are just working dr,avit ings why are they done on such oPine,,,:t paper and with such an amount of irrelevel'd detail ? Why are the narrowest of rul,eroer margins soaked in variations of brown • .0 a field of grey touched up so preciselY white? The reason is they are not just.wothe ing drawings. They are concerned With !he aesthetic of working marks in much `e'd same way as pre-faded jeans are concernar, with the sartorial qualities of wear-and-teh, And the paintings too, despite their te, meal merit, display an even softer centr7e, ness in the seductive shapes of their Wile outlined 'finished' sections. Illaupst Newsome's present work mannerist at and at worst a flawed academic exercise.,,st William Scott is an older, homelier artlio whose paintings of kitchen utensils set jo areas of muted colour place him scplarelYint, the organic-abstract school of British Paore. ing and sculpture founded by Henry M°. , f Ginl Scott's latest gouaches and collages a' .,.005 pel Fils (till 26 June) and prints at 1i0 Alecto (till 30 June) are in his now farr°,:00 style though a sense of welcome irrita:01 with all that delicate composition and t° subtlety has emerged in the form of torn and much more rough-and-readYhas artist ages called 'Excursions'. Once an worked his way through to the financicrl,gc:i joirt send of a recognisable style it is very . life as for him not to go on ringing the chang'"' a
evermore. Scott began his artistic , sculptor and has always retained a dellgh`'
touch, form and edge, but his utensil imagery has always seemed too genteel for the sexual implications of its shapes or the self-expression of the painting around it. If Scott would only abandon these props and release the more sculptural and passionate, less canny, side of himself he could become the first-rate painter he has always promised to be. Perhaps 'Excursions' give notice of bigger risks to come. His prints, because of their lack of this physicality, have never seemed a satisfactory medium for his talent.
At the Serpentine (till 25 June) there is the first of a series of five shows selected from an °pen submission (or 'send-in' as some Arts Council bureaucrat prefers to call it) largely by lesser known artists. This first exhibition Is the choice of Paolozzi and reflects his taste for pawky humour.
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