Alan Wood: Un tableau hybride du paysage de la Côte du
Contents
1. rudi www erudit org Article Alan Wood Un tableau hybride du paysage de la C te du Pacifique Alan Wood Hybrid View of the Pacific Landscape Arthur Perry Vie des Arts vol 22 n 89 1977 1978 p 38 96 Pour citer cet article utiliser l information suivante http id erudit org iderudit 54861ac Note les r gles d criture des r f rences bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les diff rents domaines du savoir Ce document est prot g par la loi sur le droit d auteur L utilisation des services d rudit y compris la reproduction est assujettie sa politique d utilisation que vous pouvez consulter l URI https apropos erudit org fr usagers politique dutilisation rudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif compos de l Universit de Montr al l Universit Laval et l Universit du Qu bec Montr al Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche rudit offre des services d dition num rique de documents scientifiques depuis 1998 Pour communiquer avec les responsables d rudit info erudit org Document t l charg le 16 novembre 2015 07 25 Alan Wood Un tableau hybride C te du Pacifique Art Perry L art est une harmonie parall le la nature PAUL C ZANNE On peut soutenir avec beaucoup de justesse que C zanne fut le dernier grand peintre paysagiste Le vingti me si cle a fort peu encourag la poursuite de2. vironnement naturel I semble assez logique que le Canada ait mani fest un int r t renouvel pour l art paysagiste En effet o sinon dans l un des pays qui offrent la plus grande tendue au monde de paysage naturel intact peut on esp rer voir des artistes effectuer un retour la nature Au Canada le paysage devient r ellement une expression artistique importante et les artistes de 13 C te du Pacifique sont tr s sensibles leur imposant environnement Les arches que forment les sapins de Douglas la hauteur impr cise des montagnes environ 38 du paysage de la nantes l horizon immense de l oc an Pacifique n of frent ils pas des images id ales un paysagiste Parmi les artistes de la C te qui s essaient ren dre la majest du Pacifique un personnage se distin gue des autres Alan Wood Originaire de Widnes en Angleterre il semble le protagoniste des Construc tivistes de la C te un groupe d artistes de la Colom bie britannique qui par leurs uvres plastiques interpr tent le paysage de l Ouest Richard Prince est g n ralement reconnu comme tenant le second rang dans ce groupe N en 1935 Alan Wood est l a n de plusieurs des membres du Groupe De plus contrairement a d autres artistes de la r gion il a acquis par ses voya ges une exp rience personnelle dans des centres ar tistiques comme New York Londres et London Ontario qui lui a apport une sensibilit artistique fortemen
3. a perception picturale de Wood en ce qui concerne l chelle de grandeur et la construction Au sujet de la production artistique totale de Smith Barbara Rose afirma en 1975 que les toiles fa onn es de Smith sont peut tre AE et encombrantes mais toujours propres et bien taill es Ses r centes s ries de toiles sans ch ssis s loignent peut tre des normes tablies mais ne sont jamais n glig es Une telle observation s applique gale ment a Alan Wood Lui aussi pr sente une certaine gaucherie qu il semble conserver dans ses collages sur toile sans chassis C est sans c r monie mais rafrai chissant Cependant il serait beaucoup trop facile d affirmer simplement que Smith a norm ment in fluenc Alan Wood En effet Smith est toujours demeur exceptionnellement prudent et ordonn tandis que Wood a acquis un go t pour le hasard pictural fort loign du calcul pr cis de Smith Comme Caro Smith 3 particip par sa sensibilit artistique l esth tique personnelle t tonnante de Wood Ce que Wood a pu prendre chez Smith c est un sentiment de libert sculpturale par rapport la surface peinte Cependant la mani re dont chaque artiste applique cette forme sculpturale son art varie grandement En comparaison les r cents cerfs volants de Smith tels Liverno et Maczone tous deux ex cut s en 1972 semblent m me moins aventureux au point de vue spatial que Piano par exemple En raison de leur
4. couleur amortie et de leur r seau ordonn de ficelles Liverra et Maczone sont plus raffin s mais s rement moins sensationnels au point de vue sculp tural que plusieurs de ses uvres des ann es soixante Wood par exemple a pouss son art dans des domai nes qui conduisent progressivement au risque et au hasard A titre de comparaison consid rons l uvre de Wood intitul e Tree Slope Nootka et qui date de 1977 Comme pour les cerfs volants de Smith Tree Slope utilise la ficelle comme l ment de travail Ce pendant l artiste l utilise comme instrument textural de libre expression La ficelle traverse en toute libert peinture paisse et morceaux de bois pour devenir un 40 wi i TES 2 n r Ve der PS Fe EE a inl Er l ment actif plut t que structural de l uvre Bien s r on per oit facilement l influence de Smith dans Tree Slope par les panneaux de toile qui se chevau chent et par le fa onnage de la toile en nonc sculp tural cependant l heure actuelle Wood s ap proprie les premi res id es de Smith plut t que d y prendre appui En f vrier dernier Alan Wood a expos simul tan ment dans deux galeries d art de Vancouver ses nouvelles uvres fond es sur la puissance du paysage de la C te du Pacifique La Galerie de Pender Street logeait les uvres les plus consid rables de l artiste y compris Swspended Lake Q
5. ctuel Suspended Lake ne sont des uvres d art statiques ou stationnaires Elles dirigent la perception du ee teur vers les domaines de l incertitude Ainsi la bande qui supporte les lacs flottants de Wood provoque un effet de tentative de stabilit ou d arr t d action mo mentan Tout comme dans Prairie on per oit l qui libre limit des barres horizontales de m me les lacs de Wood sont en quilibre pr caire Une tension suspendue de cette sorte apporte comme r sultat une activit dynamique Prairie et aux lacs et les paysa ges de l un et l autre semblent grandement anim s Si Caro 8 conduit Wood la syntaxe interne des tensions structurales Richard Smith de son c t a permis Wood d entrevoir la toile peinte comme instrument sculptural En 1963 Smith a tenu une importante exposition de constructions de toile sail lante la Galerie Kasmin de Londres Alan Wood a visit cette exposition et se souvient encore de l em placement de certaines uvres et de la grande im pression que lui avait caus une uvre exceptionnelle Piano ex cut e en 1963 Pour de multiples raisons cette ann e fut importante pour Wood En 1963 il pr senta une exposition individuelle la Galerie d art de Wakefield City De plus il remporta cette ann e la le premier prix l Arnolfni Open Exhibition a Bristol L exposition de Smith la Galerie Kasmin arriva en pleine p riode de bouleversement et ajouta norm ment l
6. e first time Wood had seen works by the British sculptor Years before in London England Wood had viewed Caro s definitive Prairie 1967 The structural tension of Prairie is centred on suspension four horizontal bars appear to hang or be suspended in space This same instability is carried into Wood s two recent trapezoid works Suspended Lake Quamichan and Suspended Lake Quamichan Il both from 1977 To parallel Wood s Suspended Lake pieces to Caro s Prairie allows a closer evaluation of Wood s particular modus operandi Similar to Caro s structural syntax Wood has an internal language to create an active dialogue with his art and his audience Neither Prairie nor the Suspended Lake pieces are static or stationary works of art They push the viewer s perception into areas of uncertainty For instance the strapping that supports Wood s free floating lakes generates a sense of tentative stability or momentary stop action Just as Prairie s horizontal bars are realized as being in finite balance so Wood s lakes are likewise precariously placed The result of such suspended tension is that Prairie and the lakes become dynamically activated and the landscape con cerns of each appear highly animated If Caro has led Wood to the internal syntax of structural tensions Richard Smith has allowed Wood to see painted canvas as a sculptural device In 1963 Smith had an influential exhibition of jutting canvas constructions at London s Kasmin Galler
7. egrate the elements of his chromatic language into a range of laminated materials coloured in the mass the painter thus became truly a conceiver of plastic forms an architect of works which were then produced following his plans and specifications thanks to techniques of very great precision and according to a vast gamut of possibilities open as much to surfaces of small size eventually made in series numbered like prints as to partially modular reliefs of 10 by 70 feet like the one in the ventilation shaft in Vitr 51 in the metropolitan centre executed for the Lavalin Group In 1974 1975 in the environment that he planned for the L Assomp tion subway station in Montreal Guy Montpetit again resorted to the technique of arborite coloured in the mass but this time in large flat frescoes artfully adapted to their use since these surfaces without losing anything of their chromatic brilliance and their rhythmic vigour are for all practical purposes unalterable and of the simplest possible maintenance In the summer of 1976 Montpetit participated in the Corridart pro gramme of sad and very short memory with collapsible sculptural forms he also sketched a discoth que project but he concentrated mainly on the building of a chapel in Sainte Clotilde parish in the Saint Henri ward in Montreal there he was involved in an exciting global work since the artist conceiver decided all its plastic forms and colours rhythms and proportions flo
8. enniston 4 Cat s Cradle Squantish 1977 Mat riaux divers Phot Ross Kenwood 4 Cowschan 1976 5 Alan WOOD devant Suspended Lake Quamichan I 1977 uvre en cours d ex cution Phot Robert Keziere il s installa enfin Puis plus tard dans l ann e Vancouver Si l on tudie la transformation de l art de Wood depuis son introduction au paysage qui entoure Van couver on remarque une augmentation de rudesse et un durcissement de toute son approche vis a vis la nature Dans ses uvres plus r centes une dimension physique nouvelle est visible On la retrouve tout d abord dans les constructions en collage intitul es Cowichan et Shawnigan produites l an dernier Dans ses derni res uvres Wood fusionne en de grands collages des morceaux de toile et d id es Il lie broche texture ficelle peint applique et exprime son sentiment avec une grande nergie Le nombre d in fluences qu il a maintenant assimil es d passe gran dement celles de Caro et Smith Son souci de la tex ture r v le la pr sence substantielle des uvres actuel les de Jules Olitski et de Larry Poons une poque Wood admirait la texture de l art brut de Jean Du buffet maintenant son int r t se porte dans toutes les directions Pourtant au del de tout et quelque direction qu il emprunte il conserve toujours dans son art vitalit et force expressive La peinture ne lui sert pas dessiner mais plut t d ins
9. entieth century has done little to promote a continuance of the landscape concerns of art in any major manner and Cezanne can be seen as the last step before Cubism s more internal concerns that lead directly into the even more internally hermetic art of the present post war period of our history What this has meant in effect is the avoidance of landscape in contemporary art Post war art has been for the most part an incestuous game of self definition that has ended within the sterile vacuum of Minimalism Artists such as Donald Judd Carl Andr or Sol Lewitt cornered them selves into the four walled dictates of gallery space and consciously shut out any reference to the natural world To compound the problem even Minimal Art s antithesis Pop Art was a strictly urban based expression which in no way helped to generate any landscape based creativity Yet recently the landscape has again re entered the forum of main stream art Artists have allowed the associative natural image to once more become their statement In Canada this renewed sensibility has been accurately assessed by Roald Nasgaard Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario It would almost appear that the changing methodology of art and its considerably broadened scope of operations have allowed the revitalization of interest in the natural environment It seems only logical that Canada would foster a renewed interest in landscape art For where else but
10. es deux uvres repr sentant des lacs L art de Wood pr sente un entrecroisement d id es de perceptions de styles de variations et d exp riences personnelles Pourtant parmi toute cette abondance de ressources Wood consid re l une d el les comme la plus profonde pour son engagement artistique total 11 mentionne la r trospective de Ro bert Rauschenberg en 1964 la Galerie de White chapel Londres comme une exp rience d cisive dans l dification de sa propre esth tique Chez Raus chenberg il a per u jusqu a quelles limites un artiste peut aller tout en pr servant la coh sion de son uvre Il comprit en outre que le collage constitue une technique aux possibilit s constructives illimit es et que des mat riaux jamais utilis s ant rieurement dans un contexte artistique peuvent acc der au domaine des beaux arts Une d claration de Rauschenberg faite l poque de sa r trospective de Londres nous claire sur ce que Wood a pu d couvrir dans les premi res combinaisons de l enfant terrible am ricain J ai toujours eu le sentiment que quoique j aie fait et quoique j aie utilis le mode d emploi tait inva riablement plus pr s d une collaboration avec les ma t riaux que de quelque manipulation et maitrise conscientes que ce soit Pour Wood galement une collaboration avec les qualit s intrins ques des mat riaux utilis s est essentielle son rendu du paysage Ainsi comme cela s est p
11. in a country with one of the largest expanses of untained natural landscape in the world could one hope to see artists turning back to nature In Canada where the landscape is indeed becoming a major art expression artists on the West Coast are most susceptible to their imposing surroundings The arching Douglas firs the looming hulk of the encircling mountains the open breadth of the Pacific Ocean is this not the ideal imagery for any landscape artist As West Coast artists grapple with Pacific grandeur one figure among them stands apart Alan Wood Wood who originally hailed from Widnes England appears to be the leading exponant of the so called Coastal Constructivists a group of British Columbian artists who inter pret the Western landscape into sculptural statements Richard Prince being the most recognized of the others in this group Alan Wood born in 1935 has seniority over many of the younger Coastal Constructivists His travelling has also given him a feed back of personal experience from art centres such as New York and London both England and Ontario not encountered by other West Coast artists What this has done for Wood is to formulate an intensely diverse but complex artistic sensibility Wood s aesthetic is as pell mell as his canvas collages Anthony Caro Richard Smith Jackson Pollock Robert Raus chenberg and Jean Dubuffet all have a trail through Wood s art This is not to say Wood has made a conscious effo
12. is art varies greatly though By comparison Smith s recent kite pieces such as Livorno and Maczone both from 1972 seem to be even less adventurous spatially than say Piano Low keyed colour and an ordered grid of strings make Livorno and Maczone more polished but certainly less exciting sculp turally than many of his earlier works in the Sixties Wood on the other hand has pushed his art into areas that progressively lead to risk and chance Wood s Tree Slope Nootka 1977 can be entered for comparison Like Smith s kites Tree Slope has string as a working element But Wood uses string as a freeform textural device Unordered and lacing through heavy paint and wood chips Wood s string becomes an active rather than a structural element in his art Certainly Smith s influence underlies much of Tree Slope the overlapping panels of canvas the shaping of the canvas into sculptural statement but Wood is now incorporating rather than relying on Smith s earlier ideas This past February Alan Wood filled two Vancouver galleries simultaneously with new works based on the force of the West Coast landscape The Pender Street Gallery housed his largest works to date including the forementioned Suspended Lake Quamichan works and Tree Slope Nootka while the Equinox Gallery presented a series of new 96 collages entitled Trails Bella Coola This joint exhibition places Wood at the forefront of West Coast landscapists Past masters of
13. ition de Caro a la Galerie David Mirvish Toronto en juillet 1971 il a t beaucoup frapp par cette syn taxe de tensions Wood examina en particulier le travail de l uvre intitul e Nocturne et ex cut e par Caro en 1970 Wood comprit la tension structurale interne de cette uvre et aps a ses uvres constructivistes plus labor es des derni res ann es Ce n tait cependant pas 18 premi re fois que Wood voyait des uvres de l artiste anglais Quelques an n es plus t t Londres il avait tudi Prairie uvre d finitive r alis e en 1967 La tension structurale de Prairie est centr e sur la suspension quatre barres horizontales semblent pen dre ou tre suspendues dans l espace On retrouve la m me instabilit dans deux uvres trap zo dales r centes de Wood Swspended Lake Quamichan I et Suspended Lake Quamichan II toutes deux pro duites en 1977 Une tude parall le des Swspended Lake de Wood et de Prairie de Caro permettent de bien juger la m thode de travail particuli re de Wood Tout comme Caro avec sa syntaxe structurale Wood cr e par un langage interne un dialogue vi vant entre son art et son auditoire Ni Prairie ni les 1 Alan WOOD Cathedral Sasamal 1977 uvre en cours d ex cution Phot Arthur Perry r y k 4 a gt 0 ee eee l T GENET Ze a x M T Art a
14. ization of Canadian landscape art can only be speculated on at this premature date But there is a sense of place and urgency to Wood s present landscape works that cannot be denied 1 Roger Fry C zanne A Study of his Development London The Noonday Press Inc 1358 p 1 Roald Nasgaard Roots and Promise Changing Visions The Canadian Landscape Toronto Art Gallery of Ontario 1976 12 See article published In Vie des Arts Vol XXI No 85 p 70 74 Michael Fried Anthony Caro London The Hayward Gallery 1969 p 11 Barbara Rose Aichard Smith Seven Exhibitions 1961 75 London The Tate Gallery 1975 p 7 fain 888 The Triumph of American Painting A History of Abstract Expres slonism New York Praeger Publishers Inc 1970 114 Calvin Tomkins The Bride and the Bachelors The Heretical Courtship in Modern Art London Weldenfield and Nicolson 1865 p 204 D AO MN
15. l tude des pr occupations qu apporte l art du paysa ge 51 bien que l uvre de C zanne appara t comme le dernier tat qui a pr c d l arriv e des probl mes de contenu qui caract risent le cubisme et conduisent directement l art encore plus herm tique de l ac tuelle apr s guerre En r alit cette volution a pro voqu la mise de c t du paysage dans l art contem porain En g n ral l art de l apr s guerre s est d fini comme un jeu incestueux de descriptions personnelles aboutissant au vide st rile du minimalisme Ainsi des artistes comme Donald Judd Carl Andr ou Sol Lewitt se sont enferm s entre les quatre murs de 13 galerie d art pour ob ir ses lois de l espace et ont consciemment rejet toute r f rence au monde natu rel M me l Art pop l oppos de l Art minimal n tait qu une expression strictement urbaine qui ne pouvait absolument pas contribuer alimenter une cr ativit fond e sur le paysage Pourtant le paysage a r cemment refait son entr e dans l actualit artistique A nouveau les artistes ont permis l image naturelle associative de devenir leur th me Au Canada Roald Nasgaard conservateur de l art contemporain l Art Gallery of Ontario a valu avec justesse le retour de la sensibilit en ces termes On dirait presque que la nouvelle m thodologie de l art et son champ d activit consid rablement largi ont permis une reviviscence de l int r t port len
16. olized according to a formal regenerating transformation whose fruitful and open syntax would not be capable of reducing itself to the simple question of the integration of art into urban d cor A series of murals Since the large diptych painted in 1971 on the walls of houses on each side of Notre Dame St near Saint Remi St in the Saint Henri ward of Montreal Guy Montpetit has been pursuing the development of his public work while giving his attention to the function of the work of art in the urban fabric at the same time as to relevant technical research without however reducing any part of his inventive indepen dence or of his stylistic profile In 1972 Montpetit set up an important mural in relief in the west hall of Radio Canada s new Montreal building using all the funds alloted to the material creation and the installation of the work in accordance with his original conception this mural was to be animated by programmed lighting which the allocated budget forbade and it was only five years later in the summer of 1977 that the composition would 8 modified and the artist would finally be able to give it the luminous throbbings initially planned In 1972 1973 Montpetit signed an impressive mural in triptych in the ventilation shaft of the Ville Marie autoroute at Montreal this produc tion gave the artist the opportunity of working closely with the Domtar Company s laboratories arborite department which allowed him to int
17. ors and ceilings walls and furnishings and even liturgical objects As write these lines in mid September 1977 the Sainte Clotilde chapel is almost finished and Montpetit is collaborating closely with the Mercier architects on the establishing of the chromatic programme of the Victor Dor institute for the handicapped which will soon be built in Montreal East naturally it is of this work on hand that the artist speaks most spontaneously of this little city as he says where the psychology of colour asserts its rights even into signs and mechan ical systems presenting them in corridors and in chromatic ramps and Montpetit forewarns us that if he is excited by enthusiasm and instigates floods of colour the surplus will be effectively absorbed by the re strained functional architectural masses So this is the point at which Guy Montpetit has arrived in a few paragraphs that would have to be much more developed to do justice to the singularly dynamic and inventive evolution of his work as much on his easel at Val David as along the thread of a series of murals which are already important among the best of the Montreal school Translation by Mildred Grand Sa ee EE eee ALAN WOOD A HYBRID VIEW OF THE PACIFIC LANDSCAPE ee By Arthur PERRY L art est une harmonie parall le la nature Paul C zanne It can be argued and with much validity that C zanne was our last truly great landscape artist The tw
18. profound impulses of modern civilization the chief of these impulses could approximately while not losing sight of the artist s humorous even ironical characteristic amount to that of the reluctant relationship between mechanical hardware tie rods gears etc and the software of electronics and also that of the ambig uous connection between ancient man the man of organic sexuality and future man cybernetic robot through this pair of deep impulses Eros3 we could say parodying Montpetit s triptych Amour the artist always seems mainly preoccupied by the lines of communication be tween man and the universe between the individual and society between the actual and the imagined between the awareness of the individual and the collective unawareness in which he is bathing but this is not the place to examine closely the semiotic and dialectical components of the aesthetics that gives Montpetit s work all its complex substance meticulously combined in the wedding of the plastic and the symbolic according to a curious comprehension of artistic form blossoming into planned delight Montpetit proves himself more and more a lavish image maker of present day experience of the present time rather in the sense of Pierre Henry s Messe pour le temps pr sent ls there not also a sort of plastic liturgy in Montpetit s work thanks to which the instinctive sexual impulse becomes erotic and aesthetic civilized and coded in short becomes symb
19. roduit l gard de Caro Smith Pollock et Dubuffet Wood a ajout sa propre sensibilit hybri de la vision personnelle de Rauschenberg l heure actuelle il est trop t t pour conjecturer l importance r elle de Wood dans la reviviscence de l art paysagiste canadien On ne peut toutefois nier le sentiment de lieu et d urgence qui se d gage des pr sentes uvres paysagistes de cet artiste Roger Fry C zanne A Study of bis Development Londres The Noonday Press Inc 1958 p 1 2 Roald Nasgaard Root and Promise Changing Visions The Canadian Landicape Toronto Art Gallery of Ontario 1976 p 12 3 Voir l article paru dans Fre des Arts Vol XXI No 85 p 70 73 4 Michael Fried Anthony Caro Londres 1969 p 11 5 Barbara Rose Richard Smith Seven Exhibitions 1961 75 Londres Tate Gallery p 7 6 Irving Sandler The Triumph of American Paintings A History of Abstract Expressionism New York Praeger Publishers Inc 1970 p 14 Calvin Tomkins The Bride and the Bachelors The Hereti cal Courtship in Modern Art Londres Weidenheld et Nicolson 1965 p 204 wj Traduction de Marie Sylvie Fortier Rolland English Original Text p 95 41 work that of his murals in which are to be found complex plays similar to those that animate his ease paintings plays of the mind allowing the artist to represent in a symbolic translation at once critical and humorous his vision of certain
20. rt to retrace the steps of these artists but elements of each artist s personal style has been fused into Wood s own aesthetic Anthony Caro is perhaps the clearest example of an artist whom Wood scrutinizes and digests in an attempt to find the inner workings of that artist s singular greatness Caro is the master of sculptural tension Within the best Caro works lies an animation of form and space which 95 pulls and pushes the viewer s orientation in all directions As Michael Fried noted in reference to Caro s sculptures They open or rise or suspend or spread or turn or bend or stretch or extend or recede understood as characterizations of abstract meaning of individual works not of anything that might be called their literal presence What Fried is suggesting and rightly so is that Caro s sculptures express their working tensions through inter relationships of particular dynamics rather than through an overall image or object In effect Caro s works have a well developed syntax It is this syntax of tensions which appealed to Alan Wood when he viewed the large Caro exhibition at the David Mirvish Gallery in Toronto in July 1971 In particular the workings of Caro s Nocturne 1970 were studied by Wood What developed in Wood s own aesthetic was an understanding of internal structural tension which he later applied to his larger constructivist works of the past few years Yet the Toronto exhibi tion of Garo was not th
21. s Cradle into bold geometric patterns Conceptually derived from the floating log booms on Howe sound this twenty foot work also employs the suspension device of the two lake pieces Wood s art is a interlacing of ideas perceptions styles variations and personal experiences Yet of all of his backlogged resources Wood sees one as being the most profound to his total involvement in art Wood cites the 1964 retrospective of Robert Rauschenberg at London s White chapel Gallery as a major moment in building his personal aesthetic In Rauschenberg Wood saw the limits to which an artist could apply himself and still hold togethar In Rauschenberg too he saw collage as an element of extreme constructive potential and he saw materials outside of any past art context being corralled into the fine art forum A statement by Rauschenberg from the same time as his London retro spective gives light to what Wood was able to see in the American enfant terrible s early combines lve always felt as though whatever I ve used and whatever I ve done the method was always closer to a collaboration with materials than any kind of conscious manipulation and control For Wood too a collaboration with the inherent qualities of his materials is essential to his final landscape statement So like Caro smith Pollock and Dubuffet Rauschenberg s personal vision has become part of Wood s own hybrid sensibility The total importance of Alan Wood to the revital
22. s have the substantial presence of the current works by Jules Olitski and Larry Poons At one time Wood admired the Art Brut texture of Jean Dubuffet but to day it goes in all directions Yet above all else whatever way Wood s art seems to spread he always keeps a vitality and expressiveness in his art Wood does not draw with his paint but handles it as a textural device Only his final cutting and shaping of the canvas panels allow definition to his painted surfaces This is a close ally to what Irving Sandler noted of Jackson Pollock s own painterly expressiveness Pol lock s fluid line was unconventional not only because of the direct man ner in which it was applied but because it did not define images or outline planes two traditional functions of drawing So similar to Pollock Wood views painting as an act of creating space rather than confining the painting activity to filling in a predesigned space Alan Wood s works of 1977 carry Pollock s idea of flatness to a personal extreme For Wood works such as his Cat s Cradle Squamish 1977 enter a new breadth of space and scale With its large central panel of ochre and its side panels of swirling blue black Cat s Cradle has a total expanse of twenty feet This scale allows a saturation of the viewer s perception unlike any previous work by Wood As in the accom panying Suspended Lake pieces and aerial perspective also helps to flatten out the naturalistic imagery of Cat
23. t vari e mais complexe L esth tique de Wood est aussi confuse que ses collages sur toile Anthony Caro Richard Smith Jackson Pollock Robert Rauschenberg et Jean Dubuffet ont tous in fluenc Wood Cela ne signifie pas que Wood a fait un effort conscient pour suivre la trace de ces artistes mais que certains l ments du style personnel de chacun d eux se sont fusionn s l expression esth ti que personnelle de Wood Anthony Caro est peut tre l exemple le plus vi dent d un artiste que Wood a analys et assimil dans le but de d couvrir le fonctionnement intime de sa singuli re grandeur Caro est le maitre de la tension sculpturale De ses meilleures uvres ressort une ani mation de la forme et de l espace qui attire et oriente le spectateur dans toutes les directions Comme Michael Fried l a not au sujet des sculptures de Caro Elles s ouvrent ou s l vent ou se suspendent ou s talent ou se tournent ou se plient ou s tirent ou s tendent ou s loignent soit des caract risations de la signification abstraite d uvres individuelles et non de ce que l on pourrait appeler leur pr sence r ellest Fried sugg re avec raison d ailleurs que les sculptures de Caro expriment leurs tensions par des relations qui jouent entre des forces dynamiques par ticuli res plut t que par une image ou un objet Les uvres de Caro poss dent en effet une syntaxe tr s d velopp e Lorsque Alan Wood 3 vu la grande expos
24. the Pacific environment such as Toni Onley and Gordon Smith now appear tight and all too safe beside Wood s present works Yet it was only in 1970 as artist visitor to the University of Victoria that Wood first encountered the immense proportions of the British Columbian landscape Before then his principal source of visual reference was the subtle hills of Devon and Cornwall England and the Welsh landscape he lived with from 1966 to 1973 while he was a lecturer at Cardiff College of Art But his 1970 trip to British Columbia opened his eyes to a new force of natural forms and growth When Wood left his Cardiff post and became a visiting artist at the University of Cincinnati in January 1974 he wasted no time in making arrangements to return to the Pacific Northwest Later that year he finally moved to Vancouver Viewing the transition in Wood s art since his introduction to the landscape surrounding Vancouver one notices an increased ruggedness in its handling and a toughening up of Wood s whole approach to nature A new physicality has taken over in Wood s more recent works that was seen first in his Cowichan and Shawnigan torn collage constructions of last year Wood s new works are large collaged fusions of sectioned canvas and sectioned ideas He binds staples textures strings paints applies and expresses his way into an open energy The number of influences he now has distilled reach far beyond Caro and Smith Wood s textural concern
25. trument rendre la texture Seuls la coupe et le fa onnage finals des panneaux de toile permettent de d finir ses surfaces peintes Cette m thode ressemble beaucoup ce qu Irving Sandler a not au sujet de l expressionnisme pictural de Jackson Pollock La ligne fluide de Pollock tait originale non seulement par la fa on directe dont elle tait appliqu e mais parce qu elle ne d finissait pas des images et ne d coupait pas des plans deux fonctions traditionnel les du dessin Ainsi tout comme Pollock Wood consid re que peindre est un acte qui cr e de l es pace plut t qu il ne se borne remplir un espace d termin Art actuel L Les uvres d Alan Wood de 1977 poussent l extr me l id e d aplat de Pollock A son avis des uvres comme Cal s Cradle Squamish largissent l espace et l chelle de grandeur Avec son grand pan neau d ocre et ses panneaux lat raux d un bleu noir tourbillonnant Cat s Craddle s tend sur une lar geur totale de vingt pieds Cette chelle de grandeur permet une saturation de la perception du spectateur in galable dans aucune uvre ant rieure de Wood Comme dans les Swspended Lake qui l accompagnent la perspective a rienne aide galement a aplanir l ima ge naturaliste de Cat s Cradle en d audacieux motifs g om triques Cette pi ce de vingt pieds con ue d apr s un barrage de billots flottant sur le d troit de Howe utilise galement l effet de suspension d
26. uamichan et Tree Slope Nootka mentionn es plus haut La Galerie Equinox de son c t pr sentait une s rie de nou veaux collages intitul e Trails Bella Coola Avec cette double exposition Wood se classe a la t te des paysagistes de la C te du Pacifique Les anciens mai tres de l environnement du Pacifique tels Tont Onley et Gordon Smith semblent maintenant triqu s et trop prudents c t des ouvrages actuels de Wood Toutefois ce n est qu en 1970 que Wood pris pour la premi re fois connaissance des normes dimen sions du paysage de la Colombie britannique lorsqu il vint l Universit de Victoria titre d artiste invit Dans le pass les collines gracieuses du Devon et du Cornwall en Angleterre et le paysage gallois dans lequel il v cut de 1966 1973 alors qu il donnait des conf rences au College of Art de Cardiff consti tuaient sa principale source de r f rence visuelle Son voyage en Colombie britannique en 1970 lui fit connaitre une nouvelle puissance des formes et de la croissance naturelle Lorsque Wood quitta son poste de conf rencier et vint titre d artiste invit l Uni versit de Cincinnati en janvier 1974 il s empressa de prendre les dispositions requises pour retourner dans la r gion de la C te nord ouest du Pacifique 2 Alan WOOD dans son atelier de Vancouver De dr Car s Cradle Squamish Cathedral Sasamal et Three Slope Nootka 1977 Phot John D
27. y Alan Wood viewed this show and remembers to this day where certain works were placed and how impressed he was by Smith s exceptional work Piano 1963 This was an important year in many ways for Alan Wood In 1963 he had a one man exhibition at Wakefield City Art Gallery It was also the year Wood won first prize in the Arnolfini Open Exhibition Bristol Smith s Kasmin show came in the midst of all change and it did much in adding to Wood s painterly perception of scale and construction Speaking on the total production of Smith s art Barbara Rose stated in 1975 that Smith s shaped canvases may be bulky and awkward but they are always tidy and well tailored his recent series of stretcherless canvases may be informal but they are never sloppy or tacky Such an observation relates jointly to Alan Wood Wood too has a seemingly unabandoned awkwardness in his stretcherless canvas collages that results in an informal but fresh quality Yet it is far too easy to merely state that Smith is a major influence on Alan Wood s art For Smith has always been exceptionally cautious and ordered while Wood has devel oped a sense of painterly chance that holds little of Smith s precise calculation As with Caro Smith s artistic sensibility added to Wood s groping personal aesthetic What Wood was able to cull from Smith was a sense of sculptural freedom in relation to the painted surface The manner in which each artist applies this sculptural form to h
Download Pdf Manuals
Related Search