ARTS The stereognostics
BRYAN ROBERTSON
The only sculptor among the younger generation in this country who keeps up the same pressure on invention as Moore and Hepworth and, however uneven the results, comes anywhere near the same prodigious output is Bryan Kneale. There is, indeed, something in the sheer quantity and quality of his work which brings Kneale closer to the greatly loved American sculptor, David Smith, than anyone else. His new show at the Redfern Gallery contains work of extra- ordinary beauty and power; as a whole, it underlines the curious paradox of Kneale's position in the present scene. In general, and with few exceptions, the work of Moore and Hepworth arouses a negative response among younger sculptors: the reasons—excessive conditioning or over- familiarity leading to boredom, changing aesthetic intentions, the heavy presence of figures who command such prestige—are obvious enough. Anthony Caro made the most drastic breakaway in the late 'fifties, and a number of other gifted sculptors, notably Phillip King and Tim Scott, gained from Caro's inspiration which he fed gener- ously into the teaching of sculpture at St Martin's School of Art. The metal sculpture of David Smith, who cut and welded metal instead of modelling it; the kind of clean edged vivacity of shape and colour which Matisse found in his late paper cut-outs; and the way in which American artists like Noland, Stella and Olitzky were making colour work inside a rigid formal structure, were all contributory elements. Meanwhile, at the Royal College of Art, another wave of quite different sculptors was emerging, sharing many of the enthusiasms of the St Martin's group but more flexible in their imaginative allegiances—somewhat inclined, on occasion, to surrealism and built-in com- ments on the nature of illusion. Piche, Wood- ham, Draper and Hall are among the best of this group.
Kneale has taught at the Royal College for a long while and his influence can be detected on occasion; but in what has ended as a genuinely simple, and to my mind idiotic, impasse between the rival parties— who behave, in their mistrust of each other's work, and fanatical clinging to their respec- tive 'schools', with all the charm and in- telligence of two bitchy sixth form sides after a wildly inconclusive hockey match- Kneale's place is one of complete isolation. He does not carve or use prehistoric or land- scape forms like Hepworth; he does not model like Moore or show any interest in the human figure; and he has ignored colour, unlike his contemporaries, except for an occasional use of a painted black and white surface: mostly he has kept to the natural colour of metals, dull or burnished, matt or smoothly reflective. But the amusing fact is that, in a climate of opinion among sculp- tors which universally idolises David Smith,
Kneale is really the nearest to h4.1 in spirit. I knew Smith well and was lucky enough
to see the landscape around his home near Lake George, dramatically occupied by his metal sculptures. Smith was conditioned by the industrial machine and technology age 'of thetwentiei and 'thirties—and by Picasso, Lipchitz and Gonzales. This viewpoint would not be uncongenial to Kneale, whose work is also mechanomorphic, but naturally nearer the instrument-and-device space age of 2001.
The Redfern show has many alluring mysteries on view; some especially concen- trated and purposeful-looking small sculp- tures, on various planetary tilts; and one very big sculpture, Canal, in which alternating phases of arrested, descending, and flowing movement are conveyed by an assembly of discs, shovel-shapes and flat bars in glitter- ing aluminium—this invention alone would emphasise Kneale's importance in any con- text, international or local. When the design is as arresting as this, the precision of cut metal has an impact fully equivalent to fine carving, though its allure, its glamour, is quite different. The energy is suprahuman and, in effect, not unlike the intense pleasure aroused by a luxuriously custom-built car or plane. But it is, most crucially, the design that discloses the energy.
Which brings us to the latest Hepworth extravaganza, of unflagging authority and energetic pace of production, only barely contained within the combined resources of the Marlborough and the New London Gallery. Some of the sculptures are already familiar and, as a whole, the language is certainly readily comprehensible by now, but there are a number of new works which push out in unexpected directions. Hepworth's new carvings in white marble, notably Four Hemispheres 1969 and Two Piece Marble (Rangatira) 1968-9, are some of her subtlest and most powerful discoveries. The first is just what the title says: four solid, white, veined marble hemispheres are placed close together, rounded parts converging, flat sides facing outward, on a black plinth. But two opposing-(not adjacent) hemispheres are not only hollowed out but pierced; the other
two, back to back, are obdurately blank, unhollowed, unpierced: no action except in the veining. The result, as usual with simple `arrangements' planned with genius, is in- finitely more surprising than anything that the delectable components in isolation might suggest. Rangatira also extends Hepworth's range by the way in which an almost awk- wardly shaped (from certain angles) boat- like pierced marble is balanced in uneasy serenity (like those tribal deities whose head-
gear is bigger, and certainly wilder, than their bodies) on a supporting vertical marble, also pierced, but with a bigger hole set at a different slant to the one above...
This very grand double exhibition comes at the same time as the publication of Dame Barbara's Pictorial Autobiography (Adams
and Dart 70s). Three hundred and forty photographs cover the life and work from
infancy onward; they are mostly very good photographs, and provide a strong and accurate sense of this artist's feeling for landscape (beginning with drives: 'moving through and over the West Riding landscape with my father in his car, the hills were sculptures; the roads defined the form.
Above all, there was the sensation of moving physically over the contours of fullnesses and
concavities, through hollows and over peaks'), and her insight into' working' pro- cesses (`My left hand is my thinking hand. The right is only a motor hand. This holds the hammer. The left hand, the thinking hand, must be relaxed, sensitive. The rhythms of thought pass through the fingers and grip of this hand into the stone. It is also a listening hand. It listens for basic weaknesses of flaws in the stone; for the possibility or imminence of fractures'). The copious illustrations, however, are almost outmatched by Hepworth's exact sense of language: subordinate here to the illustra- tions, the text has a clarity, zest, and con- sistent idealism which says many complex things with disarming simplicity.
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