Saint Ignatius of Loyola (+ 1556)
Sister
Wendy Beckett
The
Story of Painting
Dorling Kindersley London
Dorling Kindersley London
p.
388 EPILOGUE
Robert
Natkin, Farm Street, 1991
This
is both an afterword
and a foreword: hundreds and thousands
of artists come after the disappearance of the "story line" into
the maze of contemporary artistic experience and
these same artists
may of course be
the forerunners of a new story. In the present context
of the end of the century
it is impossible to know which threads will lead us through the maze and which are in
fact dead-ends. I can only then give a very personal, subjective sample of contemporary art and single out
just three artists who I hope will endure.
 |
| Robert Natkin, Farm Street, 1991inspired by worship at Farm Street, a Jesuit Church in central London |
One - Robert Natkin - is a senior artist and a supreme colourist
who has up until recently resisted being called an abstract painter. Clearly, to
Natkin every part of his canvas is vital with what he calls narrative interest.
A communication is being made, visually - an experience is being enacted; but
this event, so searching and enriching to the spirit, is carried out by means
of shapes and colours, integrating into a wholeness. Natkin floats his colours
on, denies them, deepens them, teases them into new complexities, always with a
masterly elegance that is overwhelmingly beautiful. Farm Street (453) is one of a series inspired by worship at
Farm Street, a Jesuit Church in central London. The picture offers the viewer
an entry into worship, not just the painter's but our own.
It is a humbling and uplifting work, with its wonderful luminosities.
Yet Natkin offends many critics by being too beautiful, purity being suspect in
these days of dilemma.
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