your publication of April 2nd, Christopher Small reviewed an exhibition
0' my work at Gimpel Fils associating both the gallery and myself with his brand of 'Oa: temporaneity.' He tried to put me in a groovy and in order to keep me there credited lat with the almost idolatrous desire to make "a, natural object." He did not enquire whether the intention he attributed to me was incorrect ,; and so proceeded down the single track to all his odd assertions. He suggested that l'altna to make a natural object " by the fortuitous processes by which nature arrives at her results." He accused me of courting chance so that my pictures would grow and evolve " living creature." Later he accused rile .,s likes abandoning adult knowledge and teclng"; and so he might have proceeded until he Vt wordless and had guessed that somewhere his progress he had erred. ttiebject and my desire to define experience as fly as possible with the materials I have. language is unformed as yet because my ject is-difficult. His legitimate grounds for cism would be my use of the medium laid the treatment of my subject and not eMi-philosophical enquiries about the validity 9r my relationship to nature, nor in accusa- gros of perversity merely because he cannot seem the technical demands of my subject. There is an incipient school of artists who are attempting to revitalise the language of Contemporary abstraction by borrowing the terms of landscape. I can assure Mr. Small that 1 do not belong to this movement and that my ill-named ' abstractions' are the result of experience and observation of a tradi- tional nature, namely the life and history of IMy y, own local environment.—Yours faith-
PETER LANYON
The Attic Studio, St. Ives, Cornwall
Previous page
