Page 44 - Studio International - January 1965

Maurice Lemaitre without seeing anything but an abstract composition. adopted these last fifteen years-this juxtaposition of
Peinwre leurisce And then with a little withdrawal, and after a certain coloured sectors around a heavy vertical from which
Galerie Stadler
time. you start seeing the outline of a person or an the chromatic modulation extends its areas. variegated.
object although of schematic or grotesque form. which striped. velvety, like the wings of a moth. One also finds
had escaped you as if the tree masked the forest. The that kind of particular silence which appears to develop
Hour/oupe is this to begin with: a visual pun. an optical beyond the painting and bring all its surroundings­
trap in the manner of anormorphic renewal and also objects and people-to concentrate upon it.
more simply in the manner of the hidden object of our One finds the sentiment of a pictorial 'elsewhere' and
childhood picture puzzles of which the captions asked this rite sumptuously celebrated in the colour of the
'Where is the hunter?' or 'The fox is gone with the best of the new paintings shown. with deep sonorities,
chicken. Can you find him?' red, orange, black. yellow. Elsewhere Poliakoff has
The Psychology of Form. of course. has passed adopted what he calls the 'torch of Tintoretto.· Much
through it and in certain aspects Dubuffet does nothing larger, more in movement, but he will return to it no
else but illustrate in a pictorial form all that it has taught more. he told me; it pushes him in a direction too baroque.
us a propos the positive and the negative forms. the where the elements of the painting loosen up. But that
optical illusions, the schemes of the whole etc .. .. But which makes the strange beauty of a Poliakoff. is it not
the synthesis which he offers us between the abstract exactly the tight aspect of his forms. the tension which
perception and the individualized image constitutes he maintains in the composition in that porous, ashen
nothing less than a tour de force. and inimitable colour?
Here then is the primary explanation. and purely optic. There are all sorts of things in the work of the Canadian
of the Hourloupe-a word for which you would search of Central European origin. Jean Burka (Centre d'art
in vain in the dictionary. But Dubuffet uses this game cybernetique de Suzanne De Conninck), of gas­
burners. of metal discs. of broken wheels. of nails. all
the qualities of wood. But Burka gives to these wrecks
the aspect of the new instead of drawing from them
a miserable and disorderly aspect as some others have
done: the sculpture of junk does not interest him. He
does not exploit them any more in the sense of a
figurative allusion which tends so often to become like
the facile pranks of a country blacksmith to ambush
tourists. He arranges them in accepting them as they
are and in an extremely varied fashion-too varied
from one work to another which makes it difficult for
him to discover a style. What common style exists for
example between the Mouvement perpetue/ made from
four broken wheels and a ventilator. his nailed still­
lives or his very beautiful Bouclier. semi-cylindrical.
armoured of shiny metal plaques which is the greatest
success of this assembler? Still unfinalized. the syn­
thetic art of Burka is nevertheless something to follow.
There are many assemblers also among the exhibitors
in the Fifty Years of Collages (Musee des Arts
Decoratifs) who had drawn many people to Saint­
Etienne. Overcrowded. this exhibition. to my mind.
abuses the idea of ·collage.· The curious cinetic
montages of Soto. for example. over-extend completely
the definition of collages which one finds among the
cubists who gave it this title of nobility. The striking
'boxes· of Kalinowsky and also all the 'pop' montages.
Rote I la, the poster artists (Hains. etc.). Aeschbacher by
contrast are well in the line of the exhibition of which
the catalogue contains two pages packed with names
from Picasso and Matisse to Raoul Haussmann (more
accessoristes than collagists). Karskaya, Downing, or
Masurowsky. The presence of Erma and of Requichot.
two artists who disappeared quite young in tragic
circumstances are the most justified.
as a pretext to throw himself into a macroscopic projec­ To remain within the three dimensions. one must note
tion of his old texturologies where on yards upon yards the latest sculptures of Hiquily. The works that he
-see the lnconsistances-he intoxicates himself and us presents at Galerie Claude Bernard are now placed
r
with the fo1 n and colour. primary colours judiciously on three legs in 'rococo' cast-iron, on the chassis of
distributed on a black background. machines. on the bases of old iron stoves or made of
Poliakoff has not exhibited for five years and I should mechanical elements such as the ribs of motorcycle
be lacking in sincerity if I said that in the twenty recent cylinders. The result is an unexpected contrast between
paintings (Galerie de France) he has changed greatly. the rounded and sensual amplitude. always erotic. of
But in any event, he was a sufficiently good painter to the forms themselves of which the piped members end
allow this: there are still a thousand paintings possible in delicate antennae busy in all kinds of movement.
since the beginning of the terms which the painter has The surrealism of Hiquily evokes the sexuality of
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