Art
Art bazaars
John McEwen
It is a widely accepted canard that original works of any sort of art, particularly those being sold in the West End, are prohibitively expensive. No matter how much the more discontented, 'progressive' factions in the art world rant on about the elitism and capitalist values of the galleries, the fact is most exhibitions, and not only at this time of year, contain very reasonably priced work indeed. The indomitable Vera Russell has made the most noteworthy of these efforts to lower the threshold which divides the public from the gallery world. Her venue in Covent Garden is demystified by being called 'Artists Market' and the present show (at 48 Earlham Street, WC2 till 23 December) is no less forthrightly entitled Christmas Market. The work of twenty-one artists, most of them comparatively young and unknown, is on view and everything, even the pictures of as established a painter as Craigie Aitchison, is priced down. As a result almost the entire exhibition had been sold within two days of the opening, which of course is an added reason for going to have a look. Nor should it be forgotten that most artists are individually extremely approachable, so that if you like something attempts to visit studios should always be made however daunting the idea of such an excursion may be for the uninitiated. Angela Flowers has also always tried to make her gallery as unforbidding as possible, selling postcards designed by her artists and mounting miscellaneous shows of smaller, cheaper work as in her current Small is Beautilid Part 2: Sculpture show (at 3/4 Portland Mews, WI till 23 December). Round the corner in D'Arblay Street (Soho) the Thumb Gallery has a 'Special Christmas Show of Original Prints for Children. Everything under fr 1 0 (till 24 December). At the 'fine' art end of the market Andrew Wyld and Alistair Reed have recently opened a gallery at 3 Cork Street devoted entirely to eighteenth-to twentieth-century English watercolourists. The current exhibition (till January) is a miscellany of, on the whole, very competent work, with a wall devoted to the sketches of
Philip Norman, one of that family who were always giving colds to people in the City, whose work alone constitutes quite a dis covery. Here again the prices belied my expectations totally: a Cotman drawing for £45 cannot be bad. Equally for prints and venerable etchings Craddock and Barnard opposite the British Museum in Museum Street should never be overlooked. The Piccadilly Gallery (till 23 December) also has a Christmas show of drawings, more
expensive but entertainingly catholic (not to say Roman Catholic in Alfred Kubin's very peculiar drawing of a lady with a bishop, 'Einsame Masse').
Alexander Hollweg is showing new watercolours and wooden sculptures at Felicity Samuel (till the end of January). The wooden pieces are mostly reconstructions of views glimpsed as he has travelled along through the English countryside. They are mounted on rather cumbersome trestle tables and carved and painted in a figurative, faux-naïf style. The largest piece, a collection of cooling towers and factory chimneys foaming whorls of rococo smoke is the most successful, but without the ironic setting of an art gallery it is difficult to imagine any of this 'sculpture' as more than excellently crafted model toys. Maybe they would be better as paintings. His watercolours are more successful although they also betray uncertainty in their range of style. The snowscapes are the most technically accomplished and there is an artist's freshness in his response to things: a point-to-point meeting is represented by a distant view of the drink tents and banked car park beyond, not a horse in sight.
David Hockney has only recently come to accept his photographs as art and he proclaims his change of mind by entitling this first exhibition of them in this country (Robert Self till 9 January) Twenty Photographic Pictures. Up till now he has only seen such colour photographs as source material for his drawings and paintings, but his eye is so sharp that there are several here quite capable of standing as images on their own. In an adjoining room there is another Show of colour photographs, of subjects Posed in humorously annotated predicaMents by a young artist freshly out of the Royal College, Boyd Webb. For a first exhibition it is pretty confident, not to say Cocky, and is pleasingly light-hearted, but the youthfulness shows through in Webb's Inability to know when his audience has had too much of a good thing. In the antegallery a selection of Hamish Fulton's black and white landscape photographs Includes a superb view of `Combe Fell' taken this year. Both shows also run till 9 January. At the Acme Gallery (till 18 December) Gary Wragg is exhibiting charcoal/acrylic Paintings overflowing with references to gestural painters from Pollock and Lee krasner through to John Walker. At times there is an impressive control of the monuMental scale, which should stand him in Pod stead when he has discovered how to °e truer to himself.
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