Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 9. 1st May 1974
Art — Mirrors: Exhibition by Philip Clairmont. Bett/Duncan Gallery, 147 Cuba Street. Until May 10
Art
Mirrors: Exhibition by Philip Clairmont. Bett/Duncan Gallery, 147 Cuba Street. Until May 10.
If I said Philip Clairmont paints such unusual objects as armchairs & bedroom mirrors & wash-basins, objects we are all intimate with, you might expect to see arty constructions presuming to discover the intrinsic forms & patterns of those objects. If I then mentioned a couple of titles — such as 'Flowers in the Night' and 'Butterfly Mirror with Violet Flowers' — you might add an impression of some vague and perhaps sentimental lyricism. Terms like these, however, loose all pejorative sense when applied to the absolute explosions of paint and colour, that these works are. I don't really believe that you can say words what a painting finally is. Or that you should even try. But sometimes you feel the inadequacy more strongly, often when some extreme is reached, either of excellence or atrociousness. The temptation to rave becomes strong enough to need to be consciously resisted.
So I moved carefully among the dozen or so works in this exhibition, sorting, classifying, explaining to myself. And I came up with only two unqualified successes — 'Butterfly Mirror with Violet Flowers' and 'Reflections of Night in the Bedroom Mirror', two lovely paintings. Statistically, not all that significant, I suppose — though it must be said there are only six paintings proper, the rest of the works being studies for those paintings. But Philip Clairmont is a painter who very definitely sets his own terms and they're so large, so its understandable when he doesn't always pull it off. He's taking you into this intimate bedroom world of his, not by invitation, by force and it is — or can be — a world of almost frightening intensities. An Auckland reviewer of a recent show was moved to talk of Bosch and nightmare. I saw little of that here: but these are not the same paintings. Nevertheless, I imagine there could be a truth in it. The nightmare is certainly always hovering somewhere near — 'Reflections of my family with self-portrait' is a dark painting. Yet in the two 'butterfly-mirror' paintings a kind of savage, luminous beauty takes precedence.
'The still splashed on the dark pond,
Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
That rose slowly towards me, watching.'
As if you created the conditions for something to speak through you, rather than speaking for it or about it. Again, perilously close to Surrealistic doctrine; but again this supplies the extreme from which to fight back towards a more urgent and more accessible involvement. Anyway, as far as these paintings are concerned, German Expressionism and its offspring are much more to the point.
Apart from all this mystery and darkness I am so vague about, there is this other quality that is so impressive, the feeling Philip Clairmont has for the materials he works with. You stand up close and what holds you is the fascination with the paint and the colour and the texture of canvas or hessian or even dress material And then, stepping back, it turns into a hairbrush or part of a breast or a flower. I don't know how long he'll stick with so-called figurative painting, but at this stage its nice and also reassuring to have a bit of both words.
I suppose there are many more things I could point to — like the way the mirrors free both the room and the painting and how precarious that freedom is, considering the sheer strength of chaotic brilliance thrusting up against. Or the shimmering beauty of those images that do hold the balance, with all the night colour, the purples and greens and yellows. Even — since this is Salient — the somewhere present political comment — one painting is called 'Red Chair of China' — which is unfortunately, too obscure for me to disentangle. This exhibition was both an excitement and a relief after an afternoon of looking at landforms and rockform and breasts on beaches and the oh so sensuous contours of water and stone and sky. Something strong is moving and balancing in these works and even the relative failures — like 'Melissa in the Bath' and 'Red Chair of China' are only that because a balance has not quite been reached. Looking means an involvement in forces and experiences both dangerous and uncompromising. Paintings which though fantastic and perhaps dreamlike are nevertheless grounded in tangible and everyday realities.