Arts
Direct line to the past
Giles Auty
When I first saw John Wonnacott's paintings in British Painting '74 at the Hayward, the bubble exhaled by the d, Ying lungs of Late Modernism had yet to Durst. Given the oddly oppressive climate of that time, his paintings showed remark- able qualities of independence and integri- ty. Happily these attributes are just as apparent in his latest series of paintings at
Marlborough Fine Art (6 Albemarle St. W1).
Today, young artists and historians find it hard to grasp the degree of pressure exerted twenty, or as recently as ten years ago, by powerful proponents of Modernist orthodoxy'. Yet without a proper under- standing of the effects of such pressure, the history of the period will remain unclear. That Wonnacott survived such times, without obvious harm, is a tribute to his artistic single-mindedness. He developed an early interest in the perceptual world and the mechanics of seeing and has Pursued this theme regardless of opposi- tion or critical uninterest. In a period when widespread credence was given to the apparent wonders of such as Warhol, John Wonnacott found greater affinities with Hans Holbein or Van Eyck. Of the 20th- century painters who do engage his interest Edward Hopper, Balthus and Lucien, Freud — it is intriguing to note that only the last features in the late Sir Herbert Read's supposedly instructive work, A Concise History of Modern Painting, pub- lished only 25 years ago. Hopper and Ralthus, along with Christian Berard and Stanley Spencer, were deliberately ex- cluded from this influential survey, such Was the narrowness of Read's personal brand of Modernist 'orthodoxy'. It is chastening to reflect how limited and limit- ing the thinking of liberal idealists can
often be.
In an era when the fundamental artistic activity of drawing was widely considered irrelevant or as being the mere 'collection of data', Wonnacott wisely continued to develop his own powers of observation and drawing
, believing these essential to signi-
ficant art. Given the scale and ambitious nature of his subsequent painting it is as Well he has done so. Visitors to the Marlborough who are unfamiliar with Wonnacott's work will be astonished at the size and complexity of a high number of the paintings. For the most part, the artist
tackles his subjects with the tactical direct- ness of a British general at the Somme, favouring head-on assault, on a broad front, in bright daylight. That this should be an immensely difficult and exacting way to paint is typical of an artist who scorns pictorial subterfuge and who revels in giant compositional problems. Huge square can- vasses in which horizons or telegraph poles accurately bisect the picture space create difficulties which are not for the faint- hearted. At other times the artist employs more manageable devices such as the diagonals of linear perspective' which he sets at the limits of natural vision to draw the viewer into the Wonnacott world.
Much of the artist's subject matter is drawn from the Thames Estuary at Leigh- on-Sea, where he currently lives. His per- sonal feelings and memories of the area evidently contribute to the most successful paintings as in `The Balcony: Summer Sunset 1984-85' where a curving vapour trail, gliding boats and homegoing children energise an otherwise tranquil evening scene. At other times the task of conveying evocative sentiments about subject matter that is less than obviously evocative points up one of the major problems of such direct artistic treatment. This is why choice of subject matter is much more vital to. Wonnacott than to an artist such as Carel Weight who similarly deploys figures in suburban landscape, but in an altogether softer and less literal fashion.
Because of his directness and interest in optical 'reality' Wonnacott has been com- pared wrongly with American Photoreal- ists, whereas he probably has more in common with the best of Soviet Realist painters such as Plastov — although merci- fully lacking their didacticism. Certainly work such as Wonnacott's should now be increasingly represented in public collec- tions to show that those who continue to revere the past have no less valid a place in the history of 20th-century or 'modern' painting than do those who have mis- guidedly closed their minds to all tradition. Two weeks ago I wrote about an exhibi- tion of Henry Tonks's work which had been organised by gallery staff at Norwich School of Art. Remarkably, the same organisation also initiated the current ex- hibition of the paintings of Peter Greenham which has at last come home to London where the artist has been Keeper of the Royal Academy Schools for the past twenty years. Since the work of this quiet, reflective painter has been too little seen or admired in recent years, art enthusiasts should take this unusual opportunity to assess his work.
To anyone familiar only with Greenham's portrait painting, the revela- tion of the current exhibition will be the equal excellence of his landscapes. Two superb paintings of Oxford, painted at an interval of over thirty years, provide illus- trations of the artist's lyricism and ability to vitalise the mundane through a process of gentle probing. Unlike Wonnacott's land- scapes, Greenham's are usually quite small and intimate in scale, which reinforces their personal, `hand-made' feeling. His process is one whereby a gentle accretion of marks slowly brings the image into a degree of focus. Nothing is pinned down for microscopic scrutiny yet, no less than in Wonnacott, all finally depends on the accuracy of the drawing.
In recent decades, the subtle, under- stated pictorial language of such as Greenham has been too little valued amid all the clamour and histrionic posturings of art's marketplace. Any full appreciation of his work requires considerable maturity and discernment on the part of the viewer. Little doubt this also explains why Greenham's work has been neglected by buyers for national and regional public collections.
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