The abstract painter John McLean celebrates his 70th birthday this year, and the enterprising Poussin Gallery (Block K, 13 Bell Yard Mews, 175 Bermondsey Street, SE1) has mounted a show of his recent prints in recognition (until 14 February). McLean is an inventive printmaker and when paired with a master craftsman, as he is here — work produced at the Cambridge studio of Kip Gresham — the results are first rate. McLean’s introduction to the little catalogue accompanying the show is a fascinating and lucid account of his techniques, which range from screenprinted monoprints to carborundum etchings via drypoints and woodcuts. They come in different sizes and prices (from about £400 to £3,000), vibrant images dancing with a variety of emotions, most of them uplifting. Taking an apparently simple approach to the relationship of roughly geometric shapes, McLean stacks and disperses his wedges and blocks of vivid colour in wonderfully subtle and audacious ways. A delight, but check opening times — Wednesday to Saturday, afternoons only — to avoid disappointment.
Up in North London, the Ben Uri Gallery has mounted another of its remarkable survey shows (until 19 April). Entitled Forced Journeys, it’s a study of artists in exile in Britain, c.1933–45, dealing with those mostly of German and Austrian descent who fled the Nazi peril. It comprises some 90 works, including ceramics and posters along with paintings and drawings, by artists such as Kurt Schwitters, Jankel Adler, Hans Feibusch, and Else and Ludwig Meidner. One of the main subjects is internment, as émigrés were automatically interned for some months on their arrival in Britain however distinguished they might be as artists. Schwitters, for instance, was interned on the Isle of Man, later settling in the Lake District, where he lived until his death in 1948. There are a number of exhibits that relate directly to the experience of internment, including a series of drawings by Fred Uhlman from observation and imagination, verging on the savage in their incisive linearity and satire.
The show is on two floors at 108a Boundary Road, NW8, and for me the most interesting work is downstairs. Here are fine things by Josef Herman, Martin Bloch and Martin Nessler. I liked the energy of Eric Kahn’s drawing ‘Internment Camp Kitchen’ and the strange neo-romantic poetry of Georg Mayer-Marton’s landscape of frozen trees. By the great Dada-ist Schwitters there are a couple of accomplished portraits (one of Fred Uhlman) and a brushy Lake District landscape. There’s a great deal more, much of it effective work by artists previously unknown to me. The exhibition is organised in conjunction with the Courtauld Institute, is accompanied by a lavish hardback catalogue (£25) and deserves serious attention.
In the same road is the Boundary Gallery, until 28 February showing new work by David Tress (born 1955). I’ve written about Tress before in these pages, recently reviewing his museum touring show Chasing Sublime Light, currently at Gallery Oldham (until 18 April), but I make no apology for mentioning him again. He goes from strength to strength. The work at the Boundary includes mixed-media landscape studies, wonderful graphite drawings and a couple of fairly straightforward watercolours.
Wandering the West End I was particularly struck by a show of drawings at Marlborough Fine Art (6 Albemarle Street, W1, until 7 February) by David Rayson (born 1966), currently Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art. Rayson lives in Milton Keynes and the title of his exhibition is The Everyday Fantastic. His drawings explore the surroundings of urban life in a looped and ornate scrolling style, rendered in coloured inks. Patterns resembling wood grain, or knitting, or flame-like vegetation threaten to overwhelm the recognisable elements of ordinary or fantasy life. (Figures in a landscape, night shadows, war at sea, cowboys, the back garden on fire.) The style is immensely decorative but contains undercurrents which may not be immediately apparent to the casual observer. There’s a strong vein of potentially threatening sexuality and the rampant vegetable growth has a triffid-like quality that offers no quarter. Humour is here, but it’s fairly dark and desperate. There’s something nasty in the woodshed: this territory is definitely haunted. For me this exhibition marks the discovery of a substantial artist of real graphic power: an experience both disturbing and exciting.
At Gimpel Fils (30 Davies Street, W1, until 21 February) is a show concentrating on the work Peter Lanyon made in the last two years before his untimely death in 1964, at the age of 46. What we see as his final work would probably have been a transitional period of development as he distilled the American and Mexican influences he absorbed from his travels. This show from Lanyon’s long-time dealer follows on from the very recent Porthmeor mural exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath. It’s evidently a time of Lanyon reassessment, though a major museum retrospective is still required to show the true scope of his achievement.
I’ve just been sent a particularly impressive catalogue of Master Drawings, assembled by Stephen Ongpin Fine Art. The collection will be showing in New York until 31 January (at Mark Murray Fine Paintings, 39 East 72nd Street), then part of it at the Salon du Dessin, Place de la Bourse, Paris (24 to 30 March), before London (6 Mason’s Yard, Duke Street, St James’s) 1 to 24 July. The catalogue has been thoroughly researched and contains informative entries on each of the 50 items, which range from Palma Giovane to R.B. Kitaj. Just to pick out a few plums: Herman van Swanevelt’s brown ink ‘Landscape with Balaam and the Ass’, a beautiful preparatory study for an etching; an exquisite Corot pencil drawing of the Roman Forum with the Temple of Venus and Roma; a riverbank in watercolour by Delacroix; a view of Bordighera by Calame, done in black chalk and grey wash on dark-blue paper; a passionate watercolour landscape by Antoine Vollon; a Burne-Jones gouache angel; and memorable pastels by Giuseppe Casciaro, Degas, Schuffenecker and Monet. There’s also a Vuillard oil on paper, a distinctly emblematic watercolour tree by Henri Edmond Cross and good things by John Minton and Ben Nicholson. Mouthwatering. q
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