Kitchen Sink School

The latest thing among younger British painters is a violent swing back to realism. Like their young contemporary, French Prodigy Bernard Buffet (TIME, Feb. 27), they are concerned with the drab reality of everyday life. Their favorite subjects are pots and pans, pubs, dingy outdoor scenes, and almost anything handy piled on top of the kitchen table. Hence their collective title: "the Kitchen Sink School."

Until last week the Kitchen-Sinkers were resounding critical successes but financial flops. The first of the New Realists to win cash along with credit is Edward Middleditch, 32. Time & Tide's critic noted that Artist Middleditch's current exhibit at London's Beaux Arts Gallery "seems to be continually attempting things that have not been done before" and rated him "the most original and interesting of the younger men." The Observer agreed, found it difficult to name a British contemporary "so exciting and fertile." The buyers backed the critics; Middleditch wound up his show with a near sellout, collected -L-1,700 ($4,760).

Britain's New Realism, about as delicate as a cockney costermonger's anecdote, has been rated a "cult of squalidity" by some proper Britons, who think crockery should remain belowstairs. But to date it has already produced a burgeoning handful of new talent. Among Painter Middleditch's contemporaries:

P: Bearded Jack Smith, 27, first to rate the critics' recognition (TIME, July 26, 1954), who says: "A bottle is a bottle, and it's quite different from a cucumber. I want to get this across." An admiring critic found in his bold brush strokes "a passion reminiscent of Van Gogh's during his Potato Eaters period."

P: John Bratby, 27, who brought gallerygoers up short at his last show with his bluntest tour de force: two stark paintings of a toilet bowl.

P: Derrick Greaves, 28, specialist in everyday drama in the city's back streets, similar to the U.S.'s own turn-of-thecentury Ashcan School.

Middleditch's own orbit ranges from vigorous, sweeping outdoor scenes that left one observer feeling that a ripening wheat field "might start rippling before your eyes" to harshly lighted, strong-colored still lifes depicting such mundane subjects as a bucket on a stool and a bunch of sunflowers (see cut). Says he: "The point about us is that we paint what we see around us. But we try to give it a new vision." The British Arts Council is so impressed by the New Realists' new vision that it is making the Kitchen Sink School Britain's main show at this summer's Venice Biennale.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.