Art

What do you know?

Evan Anthony

This is going to be, probably, the first 'conceptual' art review ever written. Simply put this means that participants will be provided with the usual perceptive comments, along with the names of the artists seen this week and the galleries in which their work appears. Your job is to correctly link the comments to the appropriate artists and galleries. The first five conceptualists to mail in a completely correct identification of all fourteen comments and artists will win my congratulations. On second thoughts, answers below. Ready?

1. Superficial spatters, plus pasted-up pieces of cigarette and/or

booze wrappers, elegantly framed, bound to cash in on the reputation of the well-established manufacturer.

2. Department store 'art' consisting of generous dollops of acrylics depicting houses, by a fellow who claims, ". . . I don't want to establish a style, My aim in my work is for optimism." Such optimism!

3. Elaborately painted doodles, skilfully arranged, looking as though they have been painted by the yard and sliced into appropriate sizes, with titles sure to puzzle anyone who bothers to look for the suggested image.

4. Large plaid paintings, using tape as well as paint. Obviously hard work, but ultimately quite boring except conceivably to scions of represented clans.

5. The most original, innovative exhibition now showing in London.

A treat for surreal-o-philes and those thirsting for wit and beauty. The artist is eighty-five years young.

6. Refreshingly titled pictures that look like what they say they are. The photo-surrealist technique is admirably accomplished and one or two of the paintings are beautiful as well as being examples of extraordinary draughtsmanship.

7. ". . . her favourite themes children, mothers, trees, flowers and innocence" just a few of her favourite things all have grounds for taking umbrage considering the treatment received. Can't wait until she gets around to trying the things she doesn't like.

8. The technique is as complicated as standing on your head to do a juggling act, and just as pointless.

The artist has used "transfers on silk chiffon and silk crepe, under silkscreen fabric" and other such combinations of materials. Somewhere under it all is buried an image or two.

9. An 'old boy'. honoured by a pleasant enough retrospective of strongly eclectic work; not particularly exciting but evidence of a productive career.

10. Baffling big canvases, some pieced together making them even bigger (and more baffling) some

what scratchily painted (deliberately, one assumes) and described by an admiring colleague as beautiful because they are 'spare.' Too much so for my taste.

11. Gutsy (and slightly nutsy), these outrageously colourful and theatrical paintings are filled with more than a hint of neurotic obsessions. The pictures could benefit from some 'editing,' but in this, the young artist's second London show, positive signs of real talent continue to emerge.

12. This exhibition opened 'out of town' a few months ago, and I am glad to have at last caught up with these stylishly clever drawings. They lack the impact of the artist's paintings, but they are consistently good, if not necesarily anything new from hirn.

13. Painterly and interesting, using the large canvas to a purpose. The artist catches a nice mood in these pretty pictures. 14. Turned painter, and more successfully, collagist, from architect, this young artist's first London show has signs of an attractive idea that borders on the superficial. The box theme works better in the collages than it does in the paintings and may strike some as pleasantly decorative.

a. Armstrong, John (Royal Academy) b. Cook, Wiliam Delafield (Redfern) c. Green, Alan (Annely Juda Fine Art) d. Hills, Diane (Thackeray) e. Hurry, Leslie (Mercury) f. Johns, Jasper (Serpentine Gallery) g. Lyford, Rosina (Seen) h. Motherwell, Robert (Waddington) i. Prothero, Leslie (Leicester) j. Rauschenberg, Robert (Waddington) k. Ray, Man (ICA) I. Scully, Sean (Rowan) m. Toley, William, (Seen) n. Uys, Anton (Ansdell) 'VI !I 'EI

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