New Statesman Bowling May 30, 2019

NewStatesman Surface tensions A painter who once shone as part of British art's golden generationis back in the limelight again By Michael Prodger In the years around 1910, the Slade School FrankBowling ofa picture and the way they are used engage of Art had what one of its tutors Henry the emotions. It is such concerns - "paint's Tonks called "a crisis of brilliance", when Tate Britain, London SW1 possibilities", in his words - rather than its intake included an extraordinary clus social comment that he believes should be ter of artists who would go on to paint the if Britain saw him as an outsider he would at the core of a black aesthetic in art. defining images of the First World War become one, and leftfor New York. I twas to There are hints of his own urge to ex - the likes of Paul Nash, CRW Nevinson, be a decade beforehe lived in London again, periment in the key painting of his London Mark Gertler and Stanley Spencer. In 1959, although formany years now he has divided years, Mirror ofi964-66. A colour-rich ver it was the Royal College of Art's tum: his working life between the two cities. tical image, it offers a selection of the styles among its students were several figures who This jumbled artisticidentity is part of the available to the young artist at that moment would help define the look of the 1960s, reason Bowling, now 85, has remained so in time. At the centreis the spiral staircase among them David Hockney, RB Kitaj, much less well known than his RCA pee-rs, of the RCA and Bowling himself features Derek Boshier and Allen Jones (although something the retrospective staged by Tate twice - at the top and bottom- with his then Hockney remembers the staff thinking Britain seeks to put right. Another reason is wife Kitchen in the middle. The deliquesc this intake was "the worst they'd had for chatit is hard to define exactly what a Frank ing figures are reminiscent of Bacon, the many, many years"). Bowling painting looks like. wavy swathes at the top hint at American One of the most precocious members of In the 1950s and early 1960s he was large colour fieldpainters, the kitchen units have the cohort ofl9 59 has, however, been largely ly a figurative painter, heavily influenced the hard-edge consumer modernity of pop overlooked. Frank Bowling, a Guyana-born by his then friend Francis Bacon and often art, while the floor tiles hint at op art. The painter who moved to England in 1953,aged dealing with memories of his family and Eames chair i probably a reference to the af 19, was the RCA's silver medallist on gradu childhood. At the RCA his tutor, Carel fairbetween the designer Charles Eames and ation 'in 1962. when Hockney was awarded Weight, had warned him that if he ex Bowling's wife:the marriage ended with the the gold. It was Bowling, though, who had perimented with abstraction he would be completionof the picture. been destined for the top spot, until he thrown out- and indeed Bowling remem Although his abstracts can look entirely scuppered his chances by marrying the as bers his contemporaries ma.king "many random, Bowling is a careful artist.He wrote sistant registrar Paddy Kitchen. As liaisons jokes about abstraction". With his move regularly forArts Magazine between 1969 between staff and students were forbidden, to New York, however, and a burgeoning and 1972 and has thought hard about what he was temporarily expelled; his blackness friendship with the critic Clement Green he wants paint to do. Even with his poured added an extrafrisson to the episode. berg, the champion of abstract expression - works he says: "Everything is structured, That same year Bowling had his firstone ism, he began laying his large canvases on I know what I'm doing." The very physical man show- but then his progress in London the floor or pinning them to the wall and ity of the pictures is less about unpredict stalled. He was overlooked for the impor making physical and increasingly abstract ability than adventure. It is that feel of the tant survey exhibition "The New Genera pictures. One series featured ghostly map painter directing what is happening that tion: 1964" at the Whitechapel Gallery and outlines covered with washes of high col stops the pictures being merely techni when, two years later, he was chosen to rep our that filled every inch. From the mid- cal experiments. However, what is rarely resent Britain at the First World Festival of 197os he began to experiment with poured discussed when his name crops up is how Negro Arts in Dakar he'd had enough. "I'm or thrown paint, often withobjects and gel beautiful his richly-worked and complex not a black artist, I'm an artist," he protest embedded into the surface. surfaces can be. Exciting too: as he said, "I ed. ''The tradition I imbibe and the cultural Bowling describes himself as a "formal still get a lot of juice out of abstraction,"• ramifications are British." He decided that ist"- that is, interested in how the materials "Frank Bowling" runsuntil 2.6August 52 I NEW STATESMAN I 24-30 MAY 1019 Bowling along: clockwise, Dog Daze; Great Thames IV;the artist with his 1962 Self-portrait as Othello; and Mirror 24-30 MAY 2019 I NEW STATESMAN I 53 .

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