Paintings, drawings

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 35

Paintings, drawings

Paintings and drawings by Ray Thorburn at the Canterbury Society of Arts until May 19. Reviewed by John Hurrell.

Ray Thorburn has never had a one-person exhibition in Christchurch before, even though he has been known as a painter of national significance since he made his “Modular Series” of works in the early 19705. Those works, with their lacquered surfaces, gridded straight lines, and schematic organisation, were amongst the finest abstract paintings produced in this country. They were a glorious relief from the socalled “personal” and “painterly” works which were, and still are, so prevalent. This exhibition, in the C.S.A.’s Mair Gallery, contains works which are quite different in their choice of materials, but which are still linear in emphasis. Instead of having gridded lines, they deal with systems of cross-hatching. They are really large coloured drawings presented as paintings, and are of two types, executed eight years apart. The most intriguing works are those made in 1976. They have curved marks which look initially as if they were made with a comb dipped in paint. These “surface with spot” paintings look as if a machine drew the lines. The felt-tip drawn marks are sufficiently unusual to draw the viewer back for repeated examinations, and their central dot and shimmering forms suggest theories of perception are involved in their making. In essence, they are not about the psychology of viewing, but rather, about eccentric and inventive technique.

The later paintings and drawings, made over the last two or three years, present columns of crosses and calendar dates. Some refer to Thorburn’s writing of his Ph.D. in Ohio, but they show no logical connection between the scribbled pages of writing and the crossed out calendar dates. The works are mannered variations using stenciled numbers and a type of cross-hatching made popular by Jasper Johns and Larry Rivers and which is now cliched. What seems to a conceptual base in their use of language and numbers, turns out to be ersatz, a kind of decorative veneer.

Some works using very large numbers, have a sweet colour sense which does not appear to be ironic, and which is dramatically at odds with his much earlier, better paintings. Such a adoption of what may be called a “feminine palette” does not appear to be a strategy for counteracting the patriarchial and repressive tendencies of modernism, in spite of the references to diaries as feminist methods of working.

These recent paintings raise issues associated with many “turn-coat” modernist painters, from Guston back to Carra, Severini, and Rodchenko. They demonstrate what could be called a postmodernist “regression” back to figurative subject matter.

However, in spite of their academic references, they work on a visual level only and are formalist in spirit. Ultimately they look too visually ingratiating and lacking in a clearly focused intellectual basis, to make a favourable impact.