University of South Carolina Libraries
Acclaimf BY DEREK SOUTHALL (Editor's note: Derek Southall Is inter in Resi. dence at the University of South Carolina.) Even now, eight years later there are those-including some pain ters- who remember the painting as symetrical. It is apparently. Two weaving bands of colour descend from the top corners and converge as they do so forming a kind of triangle. The gound has the same colour value as the bands. But one band is not a mirror image of the other. The distinguished critic Clement Greenbert, (recently a guest of the Art Department at USC) was in Liverpool in 1965 with the seleftors of the Biennia. John Russell the art critic of the Sunday Times and the painter and ex-critic Patric Heron were his associates. Michael Tyzack who painted the work described above was awarded the La dear ri Tim BEATLES --- ld Painter $4,000 first prize. For some years the Liverpool show had been the only regular mixed exhibition to attract serious participation. Since then Tyzack has been widely shown and collected in Europe. He is at present Visiting Professor o1P Art at the University of Iowa. Among Tyzack's enthusians-and in music his tastes are catholic-are the late quartets of Haydn. His own procedures, it seems to me, reflect in some ways this enthusiasm. I recall a visit on a Sunday-shops closed-to my London studio. Michael Tyzack'in search of two reds. He required to borrow not just the reds named but a specific make since no other combination would give him exactly the hue and quality he needed. Or, on a visit to his studio I saw at least fifty sheets of paper hang ingnear the work-in-progress. Each sheet had two colour marks on it, an orange and a pink. Each sheet differed minimally from the next. One sheet had exactly the propor tion and weight of colour he required. On a recent visit to his Iowa studio he showed me a large new work in which-and this gets nearer to the essentkal way he deals with colour-the colour bands or areas where almost all different from one's first apprehension of them. Three blue areas, all seem ingly the same, on closer examina tion revealed minute differences according to the surrounding field. 4W1 0 ~; my be~ the e sale thi Coming The control was breathtaking. The control is always there and a fitting sense of order and beautiful colour. sensations-but there js more. There is, specifically a kind of wilful imbalance, contradiction even. The paintings at a superficial glance give back a reassuring pleas antness. But they underwhelm the percipient. Just as there were even painters (who are supposed to move about the world with their eyes open) who saw the liverpool pifce as symetrical, so one can, in 'we recent work entirely miss the inter nal gravity. They do not give them selves up entirely at a glance. They reveal themselves slowly, in a time consuming way, and ultimately give back exactly in ratio to the intensity and concentration with which they are regarded. Colour Field painting developed in Britain as a response, coinciden tal with moves made in America, to the Abstract Expressionist phase in American art. The "all-over" paint ing became the most common release mechanism here, but in the U.K. the significant artists, (inclu ding the sculptors who revived that art in the early sixties and who were heavily dependent on moves made in painting,) tended to abjure the symetricality prompted by "all over'' concepts and with it the assurance and relaxation it pro vides. On both sides of the Atlantic, how ever, tthe most ambitious painting of the period dealt with the issue of colour. Michael Tyzack's works of this period are among the most searching and determined made anywhere. itles are :ord bar he is week, ir ~eatle Anti tIl Pink Flo he newesi A~g ~ ~ SAI.E PRICES AlIbumns Taj D to- ln 01$ .6 0.1429 9~ Michael Tyzack will lecture on "Matd Colour Painting" at 7 p.m., Monday Api Sloan College. Admission is free. al0cace clldingatchedn ology....0also d includin sse and recent il 9, room 203 FLOYD