Exhibitions
Gilles Sacksick (Bruton till 29 November) Charles Beauchamp (Gimpel Fils till 15 November) Gaston Chaissac (Fischer Fine Art till 21 November)
French collection
Giles Auty
Driving south from Dijon a few sum- mers ago, I paid a first visit to Château Meursault, birthplace of one of the world's premier white wines. Unknown to me, the Château also housed a secondary attrac- tion: a collection of contemporary paint- ing, much of it French. One of the few things any roomful of art critics will agree lis that post-war French painting has gone into sharp decline. The collection at Meur- sault did little to dispel this view and I resumed my journey uplifted by the mag- nificent quality of the wines I had tasted and cast down by the nature of what I had seen.
The same culture which had taken wine- making to such a pinnacle also encouraged artistic standards which were second-rate. What explained this odd dichotomy? No doubt the war was partly to blame. Pre-war French painting had been like a climactic dance in which the performer had at last fallen, exhausted, to the floor. Post-war French painting had simply resumed the dance from this prone position and had never got back on its feet. In Britain, any critical reservations we feel, have not been helped by the low level of cultural ex- change across the Channel. Since the last war it has been as unusual to see exhibi- tions by up-and-coming French artists in Britain as to see work by contemporary British painters in France.
Although two major West End galleries boast exhibitions of French paintings at present, one is by an artist no longer living and the other by a painter who is only partly French. The most interesting and surprising exhibition of the week, in terms of quality and location, is that of works by Gilles Sacksick at Bruton Gallery. Far from being in Bruton Street, in the heart of London gallery land, as the unwary might imagine, the Bruton Gallery really is at Bruton, Somerset, a two-hour drive away. Why should Britain's first sight of an artist, already highly acclaimed in Paris, take place in the depths of the country? The answer is that Bruton Gallery's directors are already leading international dealers in 19th- and 20th-century French sculpture. Now they aim to put recent French paint- ing equally firmly on the map.
The present exhibition includes paint- ings, drawings, prints and tapestries, all of which are sympathetically displayed in an ancient town house of beautiful propor- tions. Sacksick is an artist who has fol- lowed an individual path, largely unim- pressed by supposed 20th-century impera- tives. Nevertheless, in his still-lifes and portraits one can still sense the presence of Morandi and Balthus hovering in the wings. Sacksick has chiselled out a quiet niche for himself and displays the contem- plative vision of a contemporary Chardin in his rapport with everyday objects. Sack- sick uses household utensils to signify peace, continuity and harmony; a century or more of jam-making carried out in the same pan. In his resolute insistence on the human and personal, the artist has redisco- vered a language which is genuinely inter- national. Bruton Gallery (0749 812205) is Gilles Sacksick, 'Julie en bleu' (1985) open weekdays, 10 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. A trip is well worth the effort.
Charles Beauchamp is another artist around the 40 mark who has pursued a singular, although entirely different road. Far from being quiet or contemplative, his idiosyncratic paintings and drawings at Gimpel Fils (30 Davies Street, W1) are intensely nervous; surrendering to, rather than resisting, humanity's worst fears. Beauchamp is a restless artist, possessor so I am told — of precocious gifts. It is the use of these gifts which is in question here. Beauchamp's is the self-absorbed world of the inner eye, the product of which is a kind of apocalyptic surrealism. The pitfalls of this genre are arbitrariness and self- indulgence. Outside hospital experiences, other people's nightmares make some of the world's least interesting narratives. In essence they are most interesting to those bereft of vision and imagination them- selves. It is all too easy to construct negative visions which carry a superficial significance; with Beauchamp's talents I feel there is much more he could do.
The attention given in France to the art of Gaston Chaissac (1910-1964) is typical of that country's artistic introspection. Chaissac, who is currently the subject of a first major exhibition in Britain at Fischer Fine Art (30 King Street, W1), was a notable exponent of Art Brut. The artist was a major influence on Dubuffet who found much of his inspiration in naive and psychotic art forms. Chaissac's paintings and assemblages are sad and crude yet authentic. Even the latter quality has been all too rare in much post-war French painting but I am hopeful of major changes in the years to come.
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