Alan Davie

Catherine Viviano Gallery, New York, 1 October 1959

 

London, Gimpel Fils, Alan Davie, October - November 1956
Princeton, Princeton University Art Museum, The Stanley J. Seeger Jr. Collection, 1961, no.60, illustrated

Alan Bowness (ed.), Alan Davie, London, 1967, no.141, illustrated pl.32
Douglas Hall & Michael Tucker, Alan Davie, London, 1992, no.179, pl.55, illustrated

The following condition report has been prepared by Phil Young of PYPC Ltd Studio 3 Nutbrook Studios 33 Nutbrook Street London SE15 4JU. The painting was removed from the frame and examined in normal and UV lights. It is in a good and sound condition and there was no evidence of restoration. CONDITION The 1960s frame was removed, clearly the painting had been held in this frame for a long time and has ben physically protected against contact and other disturbance. The Plexiglas sheet fitted was quite thin and flexible, and in places was seen to be in contact with the face of the painting, slightly flattening some of the stronger raised paint texture. This is not noticeable in normal viewing, however. The rebate of the old frame has rubbed the edges of the painting, mostly this is superficial and will clean away, on the lower centre edges the rebate edge has compressed into the paint. The stretcher and the attachment of the canvas to the stretcher are original and sound, the stretcher has no keys and has not been expanded or interfered with. Some small fragments of hard debris have lodged between the canvas and the lower stretcher bar, and there is a small break in the canvas over the edge of the stretcher joint in the lower right. There was no evidence that the painting has been cleaned or treated in any way, as such there is a general pale dirt layer, some of this is surface blooming, as often seen in the artist's works, more noticeable in some colours than others. The blue on the centre right has become pale and dry-looking and would originally have been darker; tests showed that the colour remains and could be regained through cleaning and simple treatment. Patches of black and red also have blooming and pale areas, as does the brown and orange of the lower centre. It is likely that the unpainted cotton on the left side may have yellowed with age to some extent, as would be expected. There is little to remark on the paint layer in general as it is in good condition and well preserved, some minor abrasions in the centre are seen to pass beneath elements of the composition and would thus relate to when the painting was made. TREATMENT The painting would improve significantly in appearance with simple surface cleaning to remove dirt and the surface bloom. The artist's works characteristically have variations in matte and gloss and this is distinct from the general surface blooming, this often seen on works held close to Plexiglas for many years. The frame rebate marks would on the whole lift after cleaning.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

'It [Priest of the Red Temple] is in every sense a formidable picture'.
(The Times, Alan Davie exhibition review, 11 October 1956)

1956 is widely seen as Davie’s annus mirabilis, pivotal in terms of his career and his creative output. He held important one man exhibitions at Gimpel Fils, London and his first one-man show in New York at the Catherine Viviano Gallery, which was greeted with popular and critical acclaim. Significant public and private purchases were made, including by the Museum of Modern Art, New York (Magic Box, 1955, cat. no.2), the Albright Knox Art Gallery at Buffalo (Female, Male, 1955, cat. no.7) and by collectors such as Stanley Seeger, who went on to purchase several important works by Davie.

In his earlier career Davie sought to access a higher level of consciousness through spontaneous, chaotic forms but towards the 1960s his engagement with Zen Buddhism and the magical led to the appearance of emblems and symbols in his work to express this higher state. Executed on canvas, Priest of the Red Temple captures the development of Davie’s style as he began to use this medium in preference to Masonite: his palette became much brighter while the all over density of forms was gradually supplanted by more spacious, airy compositions which allowed space between the shapes. Although some areas of the work display the richly textured, densely worked style of his earlier painting, they appear within a composition of other more boldly coloured, recognisable shapes. The study for this work (see lot ****), reveals the importance of these symbolic elements: the arrows and other figures, which intrude from the edges of the painting in bright contrast from the background, are almost directly copied from the study, proving themselves crucial to the work’s conception.

The importance of colour was central to Davie's work. Writing in ‘Notes on Colour, 1991’, the artist explains how ‘colour is always subtly associated with pigment and surface textures: even a simple red ground must be closely worked with many reds, teasing pinks and soft overlays and underlays of subtle orange, before the singing joy-light can begin’ (reproduced in Alan Bowness, Alan Davie, London, 1992, p.66). Indeed, we see such principles carried out in the present work, with a flare of yellow emerging from under the red in the lower right corner, while the lower left reveals darker tones underlying the impact of the bright red. 

As a young artist, Davie initially found himself attracted to the European avant-garde whose successors he would later engage with during his trip to Europe after winning a travelling scholarship in 1948. As Davie explained in his essay ‘I Confess’: ‘Father being a painter, gave me one day some paints and a canvas, and I was able to approach the temple doors of this unknown dream world. Then I didn’t know the way, or was shy, or no one thought of showing me; so I contented myself sitting there outside, and fell in love with the world of Van Gogh and Gauguin’ (July-October 1963). The influence of these artists on Davie’s work continued throughout his artistic career, and the bold red of the present work strongly evokes Gauguin’s own Vision after the Sermon; Davie’s palette here is remarkably similar to that of Gauguin’s, employing a rich yellow, bright white and dark blues which appear all the more striking against the red. However, Davie is released from the confines of the figurative, and instead his religious scene expresses a new creed, one which resurrects a primitive sense of spirituality and sees ‘the artist [as] the first magician and the first spiritual leader, and indeed today he must take the role of arch-priest of the new spiritualism’ (Davie in ‘Towards a new definition of art, some notes on (NOW) painting’, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Charles Lienhard, Zurich, April – May 1960).