ANTONY DONALDSON – PAPERWORK FROM 1960 TO 2019
2020-01-13This show of drawings and prints, which covers Antony Donaldson’s career since he was a student at the Slade to the present, confirms that Joe Goode’s long-held opinion of his friend’s character is no less true of his art.
Donaldson’s art is indeed smart – it questions ceaselessly and scrupulously subverts clichés. It is cultured, in the breadth of its reference, and it is erotic to the nth degree of refinement, which is indeed most un-English. Pre-1960 there wasn’t much English art that dwelt on female sensuality. Donaldson was in the vanguard of that change and as the ultimate authority Marco Livingstone has written (Antony Donaldson Of Memory and Oblivion, The Mayor Gallery, 2015), far from objectifying
women in a male-dominated society his female images, early and late, while ‘sexually alluring’ also ‘exude a certain innocence’. There are 48 works on paper and all but eight of them feature alluringly youthful women. Other subjects – racing cars, planes, searchlight beams – are no less sensually described.
Opposite – Saskia in Esher, 1972
Exhibition runs through to January 31st, 2020
The Mayor Gallery
21 Cork Street
First Floor
W1S 3LZ
London
