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John Hoyland
Quas 23.1.86 1986
Acrylic on canvas, 2438 x 2438 mm
Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Charitable Trust Arts Collection © John Hoyland
20 May
–
24 September 2006, Tate St Ives
The imaginative openness of Hoyland's work since the mid-1980s has been mirrored by greater painterly freedom. This freer way of working admits natural processes such as pouring, splashing, gravity and resistance. Effects of chance are encouraged and embraced, as if to let the paintings take their own form. At the same time, forces leading to chaos are never allowed to dominate. The artist intercedes, guiding the image according to desire and intuition.
Quas 23.1.86 exemplifies this sensibility. The triangular
form is a remnant of Hoyland's earlier adherence to simple geometric shapes. But
this has begun to dissolve, melted by washes and splashes of bright orange paint
which have been permitted to run freely. The resulting motif crosses a divide.
The formal has been transformed into the sensuous; the cerebral has given way
to that which can only be imagined. 'Quas' is the name of a mythological fallen
angel, an allusion to cosmic elements – stars and distant universes – that now
also enter Hoyland's imagery. The notion of a fallen angel also seems strangely
apposite to the trajectory of Hoyland's own artistic development. The modernist
insistence on eliminating reference has been exploded in images which are replete
with extra-pictorial significance.
