'Flora Geometrica'
Kenneth Rowntree (1915 1997)
P.V.A. (Stencil) on Board
650 x 560
1988
£800.00
2013.014
2013.014
Cat 30 ‘Paintings, drawings and constructions by Kenneth Rowntree : Queens Hall 5th anniversary : a celebration. 1988
Cat 87 in Kenneth Rowntree, 1992 Davies Memorial Gallery touring to National Museum of Wales, Royal Festival Hall.
This painting was a gift to me from my father. It was purchased by him from Abbot Hall’s late showing of the retrospective organised by Michael Nixon at Oriel 31. I don’t
have a copy of the invoice but I think the painting was purchased for either £650
or £800 pounds. When he closed his office in Kendal in 2005 he gave the
painting to me and it has hung in our dining room ever since. Today it is well set off by the younger son's industrial supply of 'Terror Eyes' bubble gum. I absolutely love
it, the painting, not the gum. There is a circularity to this because it was in fact me who sold the
painting to my father. If I’d had the money I could have bought it myself!
It
was bought unframed and I arranged for it to be framed by Alan Harvey up near
Banks, his invoice for that is dated 12 Jan 1995.
It’s a full description ‘Gray painted pine box with straight
slip and 2mm glazing. Work floated off ¼” from back and margins as discussed,
original backboard with title and signature retained…’ Alan’s choice of gray, made
up for the purpose, is perfect.
I remember the occasion clearly because of the other work
Alan had in to frame and which I spent ages looking at.
But I digress.
‘Flora Geometrica’ was quite simply the best recent painting
in show and I think probably the best overall.
John Milner who eventually succeeded Rowntree as Professor
at the Department of Fine Art at Newcastle University (whilst I was an undergraduate there) and who is Rowntree’s
biographer has written about the painting
on two occasions that I know of. Firstly
when the paint was still wet in 1988 when Rowntree showed at the 5th
Anniversary of the Queens Hall in Hexham. Milner made ‘Flora Geometrica’ both the title and
subject of his introduction to the show and secondly in his introduction to the
Oriel 31 1992 retrospective in which he reworked and refined his earlier text.
Rowntree was given another retrospective at the Hatton Gallery
at Newcastle University in late 2003, 6 years after his death, on the occasion of
the publication of John Milner’s biography in the which the painting is also
referenced.
When I learned of the plans for the show I contacted the gallery and offered
to arrange the loan of the painting but didn’t even get a reply which just goes
to show what impossible tossers gallery people can be.
This is an extract from the Oriel 31 catalogue:
‘While Rowntree is a shrewd and enthusiastic observer of
individual human traits, whether expressed through portraits, still-lifes or
constructions, he is also a painter with ambition and ability of another order.
He addresses his art to the achievements of other painters and takes his place
within a dialogue that concerns the conventions of painting itself. His of art
is related to that of Picasso, Braque, Ravilious, Nicholson, Pasmore and
Nolan. There is nothing local about this
aspect of his work which relies upon an engaged knowledge of many twentieth
century artistic achievements both in Britain and abroad. He has adopted
shifting positions in relation to artistic landmarks of the period.
This dialogue with other painters is not local in its
language but concerns the grammar and syntax of everything he does. It is an examination of how painting works
and what it can achieve, studied inevitably in the light of what others have
made possible before him and in the light of his own long experience as a
painter. In this dialogue the same sharp wit and shrewd eye are much in
evidence. In this way Cubist painting has offered many possibilities through multiple
viewpoints, collage, new systems of perspective and lettering. But other dialogues
have occurred which have been just as rich. The gestural brush mark and the
formal vocabulary of design have all played their part. Beneath all of this,
like a rich vein of precious metal, there exists in Rowntree an inventive and
devoted contributor to the unique achievements of British landscape painting.
Buro landschaft is
German for open-plan office design. In Rowntree’s version it is its literal
meaning of ‘office landscape’ that provokes his imagination into a rehearsal of
the shining surface textures of office interiors that approaches but does not
quite reach an air of mockery. In the two paintings of 1970 Based upon the
theorem off Pythagoras, presented here in the format familiar from school
geometry books, Rowntree takes on the traditions of mathematics in art but reverses
the usual procedures. Many painters have
discovered a geometry in the still-life objects before them, but Rowntree is
the first to make a theorem itself serve as a still-life. Colour, shading and
the play of light in such depth and substance to its structure that it could
make a vase of flowers .
Flora Geometrica is
a triumph in this respect. It tilts and
turns its silvered crosses is as if geometry were a garden in which the painter
could select and pick the choicest flowers to put them in a vase for the pure
pleasure of seeing them there. The
crosses are like flowers. The converse
is also true for flowers have the exploding visual impact of his silver
crosses.
The viewer is directly engaged in interpreting the
metamorphosis that Rowntree presents. As
a result the experience of his paintings is like a visual dialogue, as rich,
witty and enlightening as intelligent conversation. This conversation is full of invitations,
intrigues, surprises and revelations; it has its own poetry which can transform
the objects and images he employs. But
the ultimate metamorphosis that he achieves is to transform the visual
vocabulary of his viewers by making poetry from the mundane, intimate and yet
spectacular visual world that surrounds them.’
No comments:
Post a Comment