Arts & Culture
No garden party
Published 23 April 2001
Art - Sarah Jane Checkland on a show that does Patrick Heron no favours
There's something totemic about the huge, multicoloured, abstract stained-glass window by Patrick Heron that dominates the entrance hall of Tate St Ives. For the first seven years of the gallery's existence, this work not only affirmed the artist's status as leader of the British abstract school of St Ives, but it somehow reminded us of his continuing power in the town, after a career lasting more than 50 years.
Since Heron's death at 79 in 1999, however, the atmosphere generated by the window has changed for ever. Although it continues to cast a luminous mauve light on all comers, without Heron's presence it must now fend for itself against the judgement of posterity. Heron's contemporaries Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Sir Terry Frost may continue to work in the area, aged 88 and 85 respectively, but there is a sense that a major watershed has been passed. It is time to draw a line under the art colony's glory days, allowing it to take its place in history beside other such finite movements as the Barbizon School and the School of Paris.
How fitting, therefore, that Tate St Ives's curator, Susan Daniel-McElroy, is doing just that. Not only has she persuaded Nicholas Serota and the Tate's trustees to let her borrow works by such confirmed "greats" as Picasso and Braque in order to place St Ives in an international and historical context, but she is planning an energetic programme of ever-changing displays to this effect. Whereas her predecessor managed a couple of modest exhibitions a year, Daniel-McElroy plans to overhaul the entire gallery four times annually - as well as holding shows by non-St Ives contemporary artists such as Antony Gormley and offering limited-edition works by artists exhibited. As she says: "It's very invigorating for modern works to be seen in the context of the past."
The initial round of musical chairs has just been completed, to stimulating effect. First, one encounters a series of photographs of St Ives and the town's artists in the 1950s and 1960s by its very own Cartier-Bresson, Roger Mayne. Here is Ben Nicholson - first "king" of St Ives - looking somewhat belittled in his hallmark sporting cap as he stands beside his ambitious young heir apparent - Heron - who takes centre stage. In another image, such artists as Bryan Wynter and Karl Weschke can be seen discussing art into the small hours around a table littered with empty wine bottles. Each photograph is juxtaposed with typical examples of works by the artists shown - although that by Ben Nicholson dates from 1963, six years after he had abandoned St Ives on the grounds that it was too "gossipy" and provincial for his liking.
Then, by way of a corridor containing strong abstracts by the Russian-French artist Nicolas de Stael and the American Mark Tobey (and by another recently deceased St Ives artist, John Wells, who with Painting 1962 more than holds his own against the international competition), one reaches a stunning wall of figurative works by Picasso, Braque, Bonnard and Matisse.
Turn around, however, and your heart sinks - or at least mine did - at the sight of the large, loosely daubed abstract on the opposite wall. This is Azalea Garden 1956 by Heron and, as such, it is our first taste of the new exhibitions policy - the intention being for the French masters to serve as handmaidens to Heron's garden paintings, having inspired so much of his work. Unfortunately, the opposite happens, partly because the French still lifes, landscapes and interiors are intrinsically more appealing, but also because their techniques are secondary to their subject matter. In contrast, Heron's overlapping parallel strokes, complete with drips, are all technique at the expense of content.
There is another problem. The theme of this room is "Patrick Heron and his writings" - it aims to highlight Heron's other, undisputed role (as an influential art critic and advocate of abstraction during the mid-20th century) by explaining his relation to the 20th-century greats. But visitors have to spend £1 on top of the £3.95 entrance charge to buy a leaflet in order to understand the point. As a result, whereas the photographic display works, the exercise of placing Heron in context has done him few favours.
After this introduction, one plunges into the garden proper, with one gallery devoted to more orgies of parallel brush strokes from the late 1950s and 1960s, and a second to Heron's sprawling compositions of the 1980s. This latter group comprises floating boulder shapes and promontories loosely inspired by St Ives and Heron's glorious garden on the outskirts of the village of Zennor. These displays work better because the viewer is now fully submerged in Heron's world, where colour is worshipped and intuition relied upon for every stroke. "By the time the picture is actually being painted," he once wrote, "it is too late to think: the hand, arm and shoulder and, above all, the eye, are in sole control when work is, literally, in progress."
In this world, the viewer must have faith in Heron's genius, and let the eye roam through the works with the same enthusiasm with which the artist applied the paint. But the strokes are often crude, applied judderingly straight from the tube, while the compositions are small conceits that would benefit from being a quarter of their gigantic size. For my money, I would rather spend time contemplating the more modest and reflective works of Heron's contemporaries, such as John Wells and Ben Nicholson, all but a handful of which are currently in storage to make way for Heron. But no doubt that opportunity will come. The appraisal of the St Ives movement has only just begun.
"Patrick Heron: garden paintings" is at Tate St Ives (01736 796 226) until 3 June
Sarah Jane Checkland's Ben Nicholson: the vicious circles of his life and art is published by John Murray (£25)
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